Here’s another quality of JP’s that I find fucking irritating, and I’m almost positive that you’ve known someone like this at some point in your life.
I call it – JP, The Master Storyteller.
Get this – Every time anyone, and I mean anyone tells a story in front of JP, within five minutes he’s telling a story that completely outdoes anything you’ve just said.
Like a girl might be giddy and telling of exactly how romantic her, now, fiancé proposed to her over the weekend. She’ll have a gaggle of spinsters surrounding her in awe at this romantic chap and while she’s still glowing and in the spotlight – it’s fucking a regular laugh riot until – in walks JP.
And he always listens to the story that someone is telling and then he breaks into the conversation by saying … “That’s nothing” and then “You think that was…” (Fill in the adjective of your liking… good, bad…etc.) It was one of him favorite things to say… that’s nothing.
He’s pretty much the boss of everyone that pulls this shit so no one has ever told him to get the hell away or anything like that.
Within five minutes he is telling how he took his wife to Italy and proposed on a beach while eating fucking freshly caught Sardines right from a recently docked fishing boat where the captain and crew had a little grill cooking some of their catch.
Immediately, the attention has turned from this super-excited, newly engaged twenty five year old to this attention seeking fifty something who either is so narcissistic that he HAS to be in the spotlight or he can’t be happy unless he outdoes everyone else in the vicinity or he is a consummate liar.
I’m sure it’s one of those three but I haven’t been able to pinpoint which one.
The whole reason I bring this up is because up until today it bothered me but I didn’t really get the urge to physically strike him, it was more of an annoyance.
“That’s nothing, you think that car is fast, when I had my Porsche….”
“That’s nothing, you think you ate a lot, after a jog eight miles I eat…”
Now, like I said, this kind of crap doesn’t really bother me. I can easily let it go with nothing more than a slight irritation, maybe exasperation at times, but never do I get the feeling of rage.
Until today that is.
So a girl who works about 30 minutes from The Company didn’t show up this morning. She sits outside my office and her manager is in one of the offices next door. So when she didn’t come in I saw her manager ask her people right outside my office if anyone has heard from her.
Nobody has. Then the next thing the manager stops in my office to ask me what I think she should do and/or if I heard from her. (I don’t know why I would have heard from her since she doesn’t even report to me – but I said no and told her I’d help her out)
We start by looking in the company directory for her phone number while in my office when we hear a message over the loudspeaker. Over the loudspeaker comes a message to this other manager that she has a call on line 6.
She asked me if I mind if she uses my phone. “No problem”, I say and she calls into line 6.
Apparently, this missing girl had a bad car accident and basically totaled her car. She didn’t get badly hurt but she was shaken up and sitting on the curb while the cops sorted out the details. The manager basically asked if she was ok and if she was going to get checked out at the hospital, just to play it safe.
With that JP walked in and immediately had to know what was going on.
We told him about the accident and immediately he said “I need a report that she is working on, what time can she be here?”
We both looked at him with a face like “Really??” and the manager mentioned that she told her to just get checked out at the hospital.
“Put on speaker, put her on speaker…”
With that, JP sat his ass on my desk and basically took over the phone call. Telling her not to waste her time going to the hospital and all that kind of crap.
When she got around to asking how he would like her to get in because her car has been totaled…. I sensed it coming,
and I was right….
“That’s nothing, you spun around in the ice and smashed the side of your car into a cement divider on the highway, once when I had my Datsun I was run off the road in the snow by a couple of trucks. I skidded head first into a telephone pole, totaling my car.
They wanted me to go to the hospital but I said screw that I had a proposal that day and I was like the most dedicated employee at the firm.
Did I ever tell you about when I worked at that firm?”
I was fucking speechless, a girl that worked in The Company just was in a bad accident where her car was totaled and within five fucking minutes of him walking into the room he’s usurped the entire conversation.
Fuckin’ JP…