Somewhere A Village Is Missing Its' Idiot

"Do you mind if I smoke?" - Ed Norton
"I don't care if ya burn!" - Ralph Kramden

I sit across from someone - at my job in Cubicle-Land - who's intensely bubbly. Bubbly ad nauseum. Every morning he greets me in his loud, cheery, sing-songy way "And how are YOU doing this morning?". And every morning he's greeted by my silence. It's the morning. How do you think I am? Idiot.

I don't mind nice people necessarily. Occasionally, I'm mistaken for being a nice person. It's just that behind his niceness, there's this insincere sincerity. Like he's trying too hard at it and it's not even necessary. At the job, we're all fast-talkers. I'm busy, get to the point. This guy, you ask him a question and he pulls up a chair, dissects the question, tells you an "interesting" totally irrelevant anecdote, then answers you three different ways to make sure you get the point.

A schmuck so schmucky that even other schmucks on my job call him a schmuck, this ass-clown of a man is insensitive to how unnecessary his existence is. He finds it necessary to say "hello" every single time he sees me. "Hey, big guy!" "There he is!" "How's it hanging there buddy?"

Infuriatingly fulsome, this unctuous asshole goes way out of his way to please as if he were born to do it. He walks around whistling and asks me if I need anything from the store; the refrigerator; the fax machine. Anywhere he's going is announced. "Just going to the head, big guy. Be right back."

Are you my butler or my co-worker? Beat it! Idiot!

"Let me know if my radio bothers you. If there's a song you don't like I'll change it."

He knows every word to every song ever made. That's not hyperbole. EVERY SONG. EVER MADE. Try him. My office is like a modern-day Name That Tune. People come by to try to stump him. It's like when Ralph Kramden was on the game show and all his neighbors would come by his apartment to quiz him. But when people come by and talk to him, I look at them like "What's wrong with you? Don't get him started."

As I type this he's singing along to his radio, swaying, eyes shut tight "She's got Bette Davis eeeeeeyyyyeessss." And his voice isn't half bad. Idiot!

He was on the phone the other day - true story, swear to God: "Yeah, I'd love to but I'm so fuckin' busy...Yeah, he's a real piece of shit, I know...yeah (laughs) fuck that...Okay, love you too, mom."

Now my first reaction was to laugh and say "What the hell?", but A: I don't like when people overhear my conversation in the cubicle universe and comment on it and, B: that would open the door to a conversation with him and that ain't happenin'.

Mind you - this isn't some young, straight from college cat. This guy's pushing 50. He's everything I don't want to be at 50. Kissing ass, trying to get a promotion that's not coming; working corporate and seemingly pleased about it. But perhaps that's his angle. Maybe he's so miserable that his defense mechanism with himself and the world is to act like everything's hunky-dory. Could he be that shrewd? I don't think so. I honestly believe he's just that way. And maybe this inner rage that wells within me whenever I see, hear or smell him is really fear. Could that be me at that age? God forbid.

You come in, he's there. You leave, he's there. You forget your house keys and come in on a Saturday to retrieve them, there he is, playing solitaire on the computer. He's like the office Bartleby except he's very accommodating. Does he have a life? I don't know. He has a picture of a woman in a frame on his desk. She's a brunette, with a way big smile and a carnation in her hair. She looks a little too perfect but at the same time, strangely enough, they seem to be a perfect pair. Two out of touch buffoons getting pimp-slapped across the face and saying "Yes, sir. May I please have another? "

Someone walks by and asks him "How's it goin' Ed?"

"You know, just surviving. I'm just a cog in a wheel, man."

Somewhere at this very moment, a village is out in search of its' idiot.