On Those Annoying People

Yes, this is again one of those "dude, why don't you drop dead" kind of posts, and it's about a particular person I won't be naming, but whom for the description will be plain evident for some of you. Then, if you don't know me in real life and live or work in here, you wouldn't even care about who this obnoxious fellow is, but perhaps you have encountered the same type of maggot, though I really hope you don't, because this kind of leech is annoying! So, I'll send my best wishes out there into the universe hoping that you, dear stranger, have never experienced what I'm about to describe, but please, feel free to share this horrendous story with your peers whenever you feel it suitable (like when someone is describing how aweful someone else is, how obnoxious, and you would like to see it's obnoxious and raise it a bit).

Here we'll call this individual Mr. Cheapass. Mr. Cheapass is a particular individual, who works a job a lot of people would be grateful to work. He has a very good income - and when I say very good, I mean he makes around $3000 a month, which in here, where the $1000 is the accepted lower level of "high wages", is a fucking lot of money. He also has an excellent boss - one of the finest if not the finest of the whole company - a nice group of coworkers, among whom he can count himself as part of the higher-paid ones. His job is no brain surgery, no dividing the atom, but something suiting and rather easy for his career - he's an accountant. His working hours are rather good and has the chance now to start early and leave early. However Mr. Cheapass isn't pleased.

Mr. Cheapass doesn't like working there, and is often heard saying that he's working there only because of the payment. He would really rather do business on his own, and he does - he asures. He hates sitting in the office, he claimes to have been born to drive the roads and be always in motion. That's what he likes to do. Allegedly he works selling cars "and other business", but when I was looking for a car for myself - in the days before my beloved and adorable Sookie - and I asked him what could he offer me, he checked on the same site I was checking and tried to sell me cars from there with overprice.

Cars are his passion - or so he says - so you'd expect him to have a car, and he does. He actually has two cars: his wife's and his own. Only his own has been broken since forever, thus he always carpools or ask for rides from other coworkers who live in the area and have the same schedule. He's already leeching on a coworker everyday. Got pissed though, as she got telenetworking one day a week, so that day he has to get a replacement, or use public transportation. The coworkers has to go for her child after work, and he doesn't mind imposing/going with her for the child as long as she takes him home.

So far you are thinking: if he has such a wage, and does business on the side, why can't he repair his car? He might suspect, but the coworker driving him home everyday badmouths him into the next millenium, saying that he will never fix his car because he's a cheap ass, who won't pay a dime if he can make someone else pay it for him. He does dress poorly, if you ask me, but then there's people who like to buy supercheap clothes, and wouldn't feel comfortable with something that may have cost an eye and a hand. This woman has also shared that he doesn't pay her regularly, something he denies. It's a twisted, wicked relationship and I'm not going there, thank you. The woman has her own sets of weirdnesses, and that would make another post.

So, Mr. Cheapass is freeriding, and does it compulsively. Well, there's people like that. Then, in this same line, it is said that he always looks forward to get his lunch partners - other coworkers - to share a part of their lunch with him. Kinda odd, huh? I mean, when I've no money - and it happens often when I get myself into a strict regime of no spending, but focusing on saving or paying debts and so on, like now - I carry food from home. It takes a little bit more of time everyday, unless mom has made something yummy, and I just spoon from that, but yes, if you have no money for lunch, you carry your own lunch. He carries here and there some stuff - like lunch stuff - in a lunchbox, but then again, maybe it's not enough, or sometimes its just a can of tuna and some crackers (so have been said). Could it be that he's ashamed of the food his wife cooks? Well, then he could eat alone, and nobody would judge his food. 

I generally eat alone, but mainly because I prefer to read than to talk to my coworkers, with whom I talk all day long. Of course I would not prefer to read if I had the chance to talk to my dear friend Dragonfly ^_^ or my dear Skylar, but that's not the point here. I also am known for my non-conventional food. Either it's too little compared with the disgusting proportions other people consume (some people eat like they were Shaggy), but then again, I eat as much as I want. There's also the fact that I don't like traditional food, so usually I bring stuff other than rice and beans, and people seems to always have an unholy fascination for what I eat. So I go when nobody goes and sit where non of my coworkers and other acquintances sit. Guess if his problem is that he's ashamed of his food, he could do that. If not, if he's too lazy to prepare something for himself, he should get over that. If the problem is that there's no food in the house, dude, where is he spending those $3000?

That's not the matter. If you pay close attention to Mr. Cheapass, the thing with him is that he doesn't feel good unless he can feel he's squeezing something from someone, unless he manages to get favours from others. His envy - and he envies so much people and so much things it must be exhausting - is always wrapped with disdain. There's another coworker, very well paid, an old maiden, who takes pleasure in being grand with the people around her and paying them all kinds of stuff. This old maiden spends lots of time traveling around the world, and she can do so for she has lots and lots of accumulated vacation days. Three weeks in Europe, six weeks in Argentina, a week in Peru, two weeks in Chile... she's always packing and on the go. If someone has a birthday, she buys her the cake and more often than not also prepares a small gift.

Mr. Cheapass despairs her, often letting go a negative remark about the way she spends her money and how that's because she never married and lives still with her parents (she's the youngest of all her siblings, and as all her siblings left the house when they grew up, she decided to stay and take care of their folks). Remarks like "you can see she has nothing better to spend her money on" are often heard from him, which is upsetting. Dude, it's her money! And at least she's not making a lot and still acting like living on a shoestring like others we know! His driver is also a source for his venting about money. How much she spends of doctors and medicines for her child, and hoy much money her husband makes - husband whom she doesn't love, but evidently married for the money - and so on. Things got more fucked up since she's going for some two weeks or so to Spain for a training, and her husband decided to go with her, so she, her child and her husband are leaving for Spain for two weeks.

The poisonous remarks about her husband dripped right away, once away from her. Well, yeah, he makes a lot of money, she's so lucky, you can see they have nothing else to spend it on, hope it keeps coming, because now it's the time to save, and blah, blah, blah.

First of all, yes, she has said it more often than not, that she married her husband for the economical benefits on the short and long run. She usually speaks with contempt about her husband and consider him inferior to her in many ways, but that's her. So what? Everybody makes their own decisions and marry or not or get together for whatever reason they choose and consider good enough for that, and live with the consequences of it. I'm not the one living with a man I don't love, to whom making love is a chore I rather reserve only for the occasions when I have a favor to ask, nor is he. That's her marriage and her decision.

Then it was made clear that I'm yet another milestone in his road to envy. He has issues with me having a car, but not taking it everyday to the office. Dude, it's my fucking car, and if I decide to use it only on weekends to drive around the house that's my fucking business. He wants to know how much the car costed, and has issues with it being paid by my dad. (I'm cutting down loans, so I'm not investing in a car even if I have the money to do so, comprende?) Has issues with me traveling every freaking year to Hungary, and has commented more often than not, that that's because I don't have any responsabilities and family obligations. Had issues with Kari and I going to Panama on Easter, and lets not go into us going later on to the Caribbean Sea!

Has issues with Kari traveling often here, with the job Kari has, because that's the job he wants and he's sure it's a difficult job and Kari has not much money. When I told him he's doing fine, and has enough money to back up all his whims and all these trips, then he had issues with that too.

This is how lately he has asked me around five times in less than a month when am I going to Hungary this year. Five times I've told him, that not this year, this year Kari comes to celebrate a tropical Chrismas, but he keeps asking, and keeps falling into the topics he has issues with. And what does Kari does, and how much money Kari makes, and how expensive life is in Hungary, and "you don't like it in here, right?" and asking for the n-th time when am I going to move permanently to Hungary.

Last time, when he started with the "when are you going to Hungary now by the end of the year?" (a self-answering question, if you notice), I told him "dude, you've asked me that five times already". He seemed off track - caught evidently in the effort of trying to do small talk to feed his envy and contempt - and then "oh yes" and answered himself, with that "well, you are not as rich as you look, you don't have as much money as you look like and you are a bad spender, unlike me, who have an keen eye for business" tone. I felt tempted to tell him that I won't answer his questions if he's evidently not paying attention to them, but honestly that would be caring to much for his cheap ass, so I simply hooked on my earphones and filled my head with Elva.

I've never claimed to be rich, nor I've claimed to be a financial guru. I live my life and take responsability for my actions, just like any normal adult should and would.

He's an annoying, sad creature, actually quite fucked up by his family and the decisions he has made. Nothing else can explain his need to find ways to diminish those he sees as superior to him. Which is worse, it's probably pissing him to know that I actually make less money than he does, and yet I have the resources to sustain my lifestyle, and excuses such as my childfree status, my living arrangements, my "wealthy boyfriend" simply don't cover it. I don't have a business on the side, and I can make my own arrangements. If he can't... well, that's because he spends more time envying others and trying to make them look bad, than living his own life.