Y’know how, when you’re about to ask for or be considered for a raise, you’re supposed to justify it? You’re supposed to make lists of accomplishments, tot up all the ways you’ve saved The Company money, prepare a spreadsheet of all the revenue you’ve generated?

Well, I’m not going to do that.

Instead, my plan (for the unscheduled day on which this performance review might happen in the unspecified future) is to say, “My contribution? I’ll tell you what my contribution was: I did not argue with my boss on Those Days In November when I learned that, not only were we not getting rid of the Bad Customer that was responsible for my losing the coveted Spam-Fighter Silver Star of Righteousness, but we were, in fact, giving them more network space and probably generating even more work for me. Remember that? Remember how I calmly said “ok” and went back to work, how I didn’t start shedding tears of rage and or throwing things? That’s gotta be worth ten percent, right there.”

I fully expect to be laughed at, but I’m well gonna say it.

I’m on a couple spamfighter lists, and this turned up in my inbox today:

We had a customer that had a trouble ticket opened on them for spam.
When they responded to the web-based trouble ticket, they said that they couldn’t have sent the spam as they can’t send email, because he is…
Amish.

Which was pretty funny. And so was this response:

I know Amish don’t have electricity in their homes, but are allowed to have it in the barns. So I can only assume his barn stalls are set up as cow, cow, cow, cow, server farm, cow, cow, cow.

Amish server farm. Brilliant!

Apparently, no one I deal with at work — suppliers, customers, no one — thinks that timely email response is an important thing.

Me to customer: Hey, they’re going to block your /24. Let me know what you want to do.
(several hours pass …)

Me to vendor: Hey, can I get a quote for this?
(3 days pass …)

Me to Upstream: Please sent me copies of those emails.
(3 weeks pass …)

Me to everyone: FUCK ALL Y’ALL. I don’t need this shit. None of this affects me directly. As far as I’m concerned, you can turn us off, not sell us software or blacklist us. Doesn’t matter to me.

Oh, and confidential to our widget vendor: responding to my carefully-phrased fuck-you email with “let’s discuss this over the phone” means “I don’t want a record of the empty promises I’m going to make.” You can fuck right off, too.

When you decide you want to kiss my ass, you’ll find me right here, NOT FUCKING CARING.

Not because of stupid projects or petty bullshit.

No, the days I dread are the ones where our upstream calls us saying “There’s child pornography on your IP space.”

And before I can email people with a black rage in my heart, I have to type in URLs and verify things. I can’t bring myself to click the link entitled “teens up to 16″.

And then I want to sit in a corner and cry.