So I am part of a grand conspiracy, I guess.
March 9th, 2016
You may recall I've mentioned Strokerman on one or two occasions. He's got about six fatal health issues vying to be that which kills him, the primary amongst which are, well, a series of strokes. Having corroded his brain over the last year or so, they've rendered him paranoid, imagining enemies everywhere around him. And now, now he imagines that I'm one of them.
This all started a few hours back, when he asked me a question about this thing I am building at work. Building this thing took a bit longer than is usual, since the people who get paid a lot more than me to test the things I build managed to set the darn thing on fire, and I got stuck with the check... having to repair all of the damage they caused with said fire.
So Strokerman, having missed all this by dint of being in the hospital earlier this week, asked when the thing was going to be done. So I told him. And then, an hour later, he asked me again, to which I replied 'Exactly when I said it would be an hour ago, man.' Precise wording, there. This, naturally, elicited his standing up and yelling at me. 'You're lying, Denny. You never told me that.'
Oh, really.
So the man whose brain is screwed six ways from Sunday (why is Sunday capitalized, anyway?), already having a somewhat tenuous grasp on reality, proclaims that I'm trying to mess with his head. That I'm just as bad as everyone else at the company who's trying to 'get' him. In addition to all of his other failings, I guess he also has a distinct lack of self-awareness.
So this is my new reality at work. Not only do I have to deal with people cramming themselves into the carefully aligned work space I've carved out, I have to put up with a paranoid crackpot sitting six feet away from me. But there's a relatively easy way to deal with this. He's already figured out through my blatantly obvious body language that I'm angry about something.
We'll see if he sorts out that it's him. And he might. Because the easiest way to avoid being accused of lying to someone is to simply not talk to them at all. At all. And this, this is precisely what I'm going to do, because I don't get paid enough to be the caretaker for someone who's going to tantrum at me at the drop of a hat. Much less probably keel over dead sometime this year.