It's one of those days that started off annoying and grew progressively irritating and boring, and I'm going to reveal although it embarrasses me, that the highlight so far has been the discovery of two Good-n-Plenty candies that rolled unnoticed under my keyboard yesterday. (Yay! Free dessert!)

Today I reached my saturation point with coworkers of a specific mindset, namely, those who take visible delight in pointing out the mistakes of others (i.e., me). I am sure that my combined sixteen hours of mandatory customer service training affords me a certain superiority in this area, and that a greater person would cut them some slack, but I've just had it. I'm tired of receiving curt, formal e-mails detailing my perceived mistake, involving screen-shots of the offending typo, or whatever. The magnitude of the response invariably outweighs the nature of my offense (or, as is frequently the case, my perceived offense), and I get the feeling that their shock and awe campaign of mistake eradication constitutes as much as 80 percent of their daily duties. It is probably unfair for me to complain about an activity that likely represents their sole source of joy in the world, but then, that is what I do best.

I am a reasonable person operating in good faith, which is to say that I do not intentionally ignore instructions or misdirect e-mails specifically to annoy someone. Yet every time I deal with a few certain people, they react as if my sole purpose in life is to make their lives more unpleasant. (I'm familiar with this mindset, as it was my father's primary philosophy, with "They All Just Want To See Me Fail" running a close second.)

Yesterday, and here I'm going to venture into pseudonyms, I sent a document to Ann, as I always do with that type of document. When I arrived this morning, I got an e-mail from Beth, stating that she was "supposed to" get the document first. Beth works fifty feet away from Ann, but instead of going to get the document, she sat down and crafted a long and bitter e-mail detailing exactly why what I had done was idiotic, and how my idiocy meant that, sometime this afternoon, she would have to "explain" my mistake to Ann. (I have no idea why she would wait until the afternoon for something this important to the survival of the human race, but that is her prerogative.)

Whatever. I called Ann, said, "Hey, would you take that document to Beth?" she said, "Sure!" and that was that, which leached all the drama from the situation, causing Beth to hate me even more for wrongly solving the problem instead of allowing her to focus on the actual issue, which is my offensive and egregious imperfection.

So... I erased my first three e-mails back to Beth, in the interest of, well, self-interest. But here is what I wanted to write:

"OK, Beth! I get it! I fucked up the important Chain of Document Delivery System, thereby deservedly incurring your wrath, for you are a supreme and omnipotent being who must be appeased at all times, even if you look like a pasty secretary with a horse face and a thatched roof of straw for hair and googly eyes. And you look beiger than Nicole Kidman in "Birth," because you never wear any blush and your beige lips blend into your beige face, which blends into your beige polyester blouse from the Tog Shop. And no one likes you, Beigey. And everyone likes me, so neener neener neener, you big twat, and I'll See You Next Tuesday, if you know what I mean!"

YOU know what I mean.

Star of the day. . .Choo Choo Charlie