Miss Snippy

I've been in the Uk for two days now and yet again I find myself being 'told off' by my boss.

Thing is, she's been reading some management twaddle about effective communication and, it seems, I'm not up to scratch.

Apparently, I am:

- snippy
- sarcastic
- insensitive

and I make people feel uncomfortable with my over-use of innuendo.

Well, to be honest, she does have a point. I can't argue with much of that.

Apparently, instead of the above, I'm supposed to be:

- collaborative
- supportive
- empathic

Equally, I think she does have a point - all of these are good things to be. As we discussed this, I pulled out a few examples of her behaviour to illustrate her points.

Example 1

The time she said "Well, I wouldn't want him to think you're a queer" when explaining why she'd told a customer that I still hadn't found the right girl.

Example 2

The time she left an advert for diet pills on my desk with a note saying "saw this and thought of you".

Example 3

How she'd said to me, this very morning, that my fitness regime seemed to have been overtaken by an "eating regime".

Example 4

The occasion where she'd seen fit to remark on how I looked young, but how "it's so diffcult to tell how old a fat person is, their skin is pulled so tightly".

You can imagine, that after we'd had our 'chat' she was looking desperately for an olive branch and regretting having started the whole conversation in the first place.

I know I'm not an ideal employee. I'm rude, obnoxious and sarcastic. I'm garish, loud and I talk dirty. But equally, I'm thoughtful, friendly and welcoming - and I'll go out of my way to include people and make them feel at home.

Now, I don't want to get all religious on her ass, but hey, sometimes the good book speaks sense...

"Yo Hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye..."

I added the 'yo' myself to make it a bit more ghetto.

You get my point.