Bus

If you were to randomly pass my office door on any given weekday (which you wouldn't, since I work in a locked-down facility complete with magnetic keys and handscan machines and burly uniform-clad African-American lesbians with guns), you would perchance to hear myself, or one of my co-workers, making a noise that you'd more likely expect to hear coming from a kindergarten classroom than a cube farm full to brimming with mature legal minds. Honk-honk! Beep-beep! Honk! Beep! Honk! Often, these noises are closely followed by a mad sort of giggling, and occasionally even something sounding suspiciously like a Bronx Cheer. No, we have not lost our collective marbles. We are simply signaling the imminent arrival or departure of The Bus.

There are two of my co-workers, in specific, for whom we make these asinine yet oh-so-gratifying onomatopoeic sounds, and you all know him, and her. In fact, I'll wager my last dollar that every single one of you reading this either has a Bus, or has had a Bus in your life at some point or other. And, no, this has nothing to do with dear Leslie, but everything to do with a no-talent cocksucking assclown who is convinced that making you look bad will cover his or her own inadequacies.

Derivation of the term? "...so she put the wrong covers on her TPS reports, and then tried to shove me under the bus by telling Robert that I didn't send her the e-mail. Can you believe that shit?"

We have this one co-worker, a rung or two up the org chart from where your faithful narrator currently rests, who is so notorious for this type of behavior that nearly everything she says and does is suspect. It's pitiful, really; somehow, under a previous regime, she clawed her way into a directorship, and now finds herself totally and completely out of her depth. She wanders the halls, a stricken, deer-in-the-headlights look in her eye at all times, wondering how you turn on that thing on her desk (a computer) and why nobody sent her the memo that it is not, in fact, still 1983. Oblivious to the target on her back, she seems structurally incapable of making a statement without shoving someone else under the bus. "Oh...did you mean for ME to do the research on that? I clearly remember John telling me that Fifi was supposed to handle that case." And then The Bus fixes her gimlet gaze on Fifi, expecting John to jump on her like scabies. Which he never does, of course, because he's not an idiot, and he hears a faint horn-honk, himself....and she just succeeds in making herself look like more of an outclassed loser, and getting in trouble for hearing things that never happened. Poor, poor Bus; I could almost feel sorry for her, had she not tried to pull that shit on me, once upon a time.

There's another guy I could mention, another Bus, just as transparent as the lady I mentioned above, but sneakier. Master of the dump-and-run, he'll throw a pile of work he's had four months to take care of on the desk of an underling at four-thirty of the post-meridian on a Friday, and run away to soothe himself at home, jerking off to his image in the mirror. Or so I suspect. Then, when that wearied and miserable underling shows up at eight a.m. on Monday, missing scraps of information that only the Dump-and-Runner could have provided, he'll tear strips out of said underling in front of his boss, hoping to excuse his own laxity. Of course, just like in the case above, it never works - because El Jefe knows full well that this guy has had four months to do the work and that he dumped it on Fifi at four-thirty of the post-meridian on a Friday - it just succeeds in engendering ill-feeling with Fifi and ensuring him an ass-chewing of his very own, behind closed doors. In fact, this Bus's days are numbered... I even have a personnel file in my cabinet right now, with the exact figure specified.

Honk, honk.

On the job, in the stream of life, you will find these people, these pitiful losers, frantically chumming the waters around you in the hope that they can swim away to safety before the sharks notice they're gone, expecting to lull the vicious monsters with the nibbling of Fleshy Treats composed of your genitalia. A true Bus has no conscience, either, so it doesn't bother them, the screams of the dying, as they paddle their (usually) flaccid asses to relative but short-lived safety. Sadly, the true Bus also has little native awareness of the fact that they are huge and glaring eyesores that the rest of us cannot fail to notice...and so they repeat their actions, over and over again, until they are shitcanned for good.

Speed the day, O Lord, speed the fucking day.