Believe it or not, I didn’t coin this word, it came from my therapist. I still get taken aback when she drops an F bomb but she was on the money when I went “on strike” with the world last June. I can handle the bullshit but sometimes I need to remove myself from the scene or else I will say something pretty damned cruel or more importantly, probably speak truth to incompetent power, and then I’m in a situation I can’t hit rewind on (is “rewind” still a thing with Millennials and early?). When I did this to an Grade-A seagull manager over a decade ago, he retaliated while HR sat there with its collective thumbs up its collective asshole.
Much of this new bout was fueled by my futile effort to salvage the D&D game on Sundays at Dragon’s Lair through a work-based group. Sisyphus would’ve told me to give it up once the last, semi-reliable co-worker bailed. No, not stupid me. I did kick out the last co-worker as I grew tired of him rudely telling me he couldn’t make within a couple hours of game time…every damn Sunday. Not Saturday or Friday, always Sunday morning! Then I found a couple more candidates through online stuff…short version: don’t bother with them, they’re magnets for shitty players based upon the odds I’ve endured. I have since erased all accounts with “RPG Group Finder Whatever (still a crappy beta too)” and Discord (not a good word choice if you want to have fun in my opinion). I kept the pointless Warhorn.net only for its necessity with Chupacabracon.
So I was down to two and I thought, not a problem, I did it before with my friends Elizabeth and Matt to great effect. When the third player (Terra) entered, I tweaked things and off we went taking down a few villains. Not these two losers. The one I had decent expectations of suddenly had dentist issues and requested to play via Discord’s audio/video (in)capabilities. We’ll call her TC for short, or what I call a Leslie. Given Dragon’s Lair’s Wi-Fi not really being designed for the load TC put on it, it was a constant nuisance, dropping the signal every 15 minutes. I also made it clear how this Discord crap was going to be a one-time exception. Tabletop means you need to be physically and mentally present. If you want to play with other people over the Internet, then find them, leave me alone, I hate it. Better yet, just skip the human elements and invest the hours into WoW or whatever button-mashing, mind-numbing game is hot stuff. The other player, he turned out to have the maturity of a Rat Queens character. His character concept was quite interesting while his execution matched every other socially retarded player I’ve dealt with for 38 years…a Monty Hauler or Murder Hobo, MH. Someone with a grade-school comprehension on how Alignment guides a character’s moral compass not dictates to the letter. Probably this oversimplified and inaccurate chart is how MH understands it.
I was going to let matters slide as they did make progress through Gorgoldand’s Gauntlet. Hell, I loved how TC utilized the spell unseen servant to solve a problem. After a tedious battle I decided we found a good spot to pause. When I received my phone back from MH, I loaned it to him for that Discord shit since he couldn’t get it working on his Android (another reason why Galaxy sucks), I read TC’s shit talk about me “backing off.” Whatever “backing off” meant, I knew my DM Danger Sense was at 11 because I had the second coming of a Leslie occurring. Once again, another player who never runs anything but is always, constantly shitting all over a DM’s work and whines to get their way, thinking there’s a scarcity of players so the DM will bend over and take it up the ass. No. No I won’t, especially for a TC. D&D may be a cooperative effort but the DM is the director of a movie and when I’m running it, I’m fuckin’ Martin Scorsese. When I have a DeNiro caliber player, the game is magic! Sadly, my hobby is filled with Sharon Stones and Ray Liottas writing checks their asses can’t cash.
Anyway, my mood was crappy and it didn’t let up the following day at work as the ‘fuckits’ progressed. First, I wrote through Discord directly to TC on how the game was done and how I recognized her behaviors as the definition of a TC which I will not tolerate. As an aside, I gave the advice of not shit-talking about other people until she remembers who owns the device receiving said shit talk. I got around the deleting Discord later in the day. TC is psycho too! When I woke from my nap (more on this later) there was a tirade from her in my iPhone’s Messages. I just ignored it as I blocked her phone number. She must think I care what her opinion is or can teach me a lesson. As Bender once said in this regard, “Better mascots than you have tried.”
Feeling great over waking my sleeping dragon of cruel, acerbic wit, I proceeded to request a refund for some crappy software which will remain nameless yet rhymes with Schmero Lab. It may have been on sale for under $20 with all the Pathfinder pieces but as I told them in my e-mail; paper, pencils, dice and a spreadsheet is faster. Their product is a shitty PC product ported to the Mac based upon its poor performance and UI. I threw in how I would go to my credit union as well should they refuse. Amazingly, I received a terse reply within a couple hours (I wasn’t expecting anything less given how poorly run Gamer-based companies are) saying I would get my money back, my feedback was unhelpful and any issues with the UI were soundly my fault. The disabling of my key wasn’t necessary, I wouldn’t share this crap with the original TC Leslie…she insisted on utilizing something equally awful; I had erased the junk hours ago. My parting shot back was “sticks and stones,” grow thicker skin and I struggled with the UI for it was shit.
Two for two!
The downside of the ‘fuckits’ is how they mess with my sleep and I had been up since 5 AM and I was nodding out. I took a half day from work and haven’t been back since as this syndrome also makes me bed-ridden. A wise move for there were a couple annoyances at work it would be best to not unload on, I will need their cooperation in the future and as I learned years ago, HR protects thin-skinned inept people.
