Lowest Score Wins
Getting the last word can be an art form if you work at it!
Or at least that's what I like to tell myself. It's not too impressive on paper but it's a sweet feeling to be winning at petty improv with a miserable coworker or aggravating stranger.
The best verbal chess matches are won with a single turn of phrase. Many may try to out wit me and many have succeeded but not everyone so the score board doesn't sit at zero.
The real trick is learning when you can and can't let loose that phrase right on the tip of your silver tongue. You gotta pick and chose your battles or whatever...
Sometimes it's like battling a fellow knight swords swinging as you dance around the ring the outcome anybody's guess. But sometimes it's like leading someone into a trap and they won't know until after they've fallen in, it feels like learning the best moves to win every game of tic-tac-toe, like some secret power to ward you against fools who's only apparent goal in life is to squash your tranquility.
I have a few coworkers who have tried there best to make me subordinate to them but they didn't realize, I bite! My favorite incident was when they called the phone in my office (a bad start, I like to have a paper trail with these two) and asked me to help them out by putting up projects for a show. (they'd lied to me about the show earlier in the week saying it was a student show with student work, it was there show with only there own work) They'd never done anything to make me feel the need to volunteer my time to there nonsense. So I told them I can't do it, they asked again and I said I won't do it, then with there idea of venom one of them asked "can't or won't?" And I said "Yes!" They went silent! Couldn't come up with anything to say to that one.
They didn't ask me to help with there personal projects again. Chalk that one up in the win column!
One of them has retired recently, I'm thrilled for them and for the student who will be spared there toxic personality. I've been told they weren't always as miserable to work with but there like this now and doing there best to give freshman a terrible college experience.
There students would come down to me in my dungeon at the bottom of the world, under the guise of "We need help with our project" every time all they really wanted to do was escape and talk mad shit. Which would be fun but I have to try to work with there professors professionally, regardless of how I feel about them personally. There's also some expectation that I act like the adult in the room. So when these students would look to me to jump in on there debriefs, I should say nothing at all and mostly that's what happens but sometimes when the tails are especially abhorrent I can't stop myself from at least reassuring them there not alone in this storm and they can speak to the higher powers about what's happening. Some of them do some of them don't. But I know they'll at least have my cave to come hide in when they need it.
Getting the last laugh can be a thrill, when the people who enter the battlefield are terrible, it makes the wins a little sweeter. I'd like to thank my southern upbringing for teaching me how to verbally sneak up behind someone and kick them in the ass before they can land any punches.
But just remember dear reader It doesn't matter how clever your quip is. If you say it to the wrong person at the wrong time, HR might have to email you about it.
But that shouldn't stop you from trying anyway!
Go get'em tiger!
-J