Shut Up, Little Man!
I have worked with a wide variety of bastards. One, however, stands out. For the sake of this story I'll only give his name as Tim.

You know the sort of short guy who compensates for his lack of stature by becoming arrogant, obnoxious, loud and generally irritating as fuck? They'll sometimes also get into bodybuilding or something else like that to emphasize their masculinity, doing their best to become an alpha male. And all the while, if you're more than an inch taller than they are, they'll automatically hate you.

Yup, that's Tim. A human version of a Chihuahua. He was a maintenance tech in the semiconductor plant I worked in, so I had to deal with this yapping little wart on a daily basis. Every time I did so I thought of him as being a snarling little dog, the sort where you want to either step on it like a bug or piss on its head, just to see what it will do.

He has an attitude about engineers. A really bad attitude. Tim didn't go to college, he learned what he knows on the job, so if you went to college you're especially beneath contempt. Particularly if you're tall.

The little fucker even went as far as to sabotage an experiment I was running for one of the engineers. I had it fully documented- what the experiment called for him to do, what it called for me to do, what order it was to be done in, and how he had done it instead. So when the other engineer and I raised hell about it, he got even more pissy. He also once shut down a polisher in mid-cycle because he knew that it would cause me troubles- but again, I had documentation so he had to get the shit for destroying two wafers.

At the time I had to carry a radio with me, tuned to the frequency for our department, so I had to listen to the Maintenance clowns blathering back and forth over it. They were especially fond of broadcasting the Burger King Christmas Carol over it repeatedly through the shift, or something else even more obnoxious. A little bit of that goes a long way, ya know?

I found the perfect reply.

members.aol.com/leesausage/shut_up.html

I found the recordings online and cut out the relevant clips. I then took them into work with a set of headphones. And if I heard Tim blathering on needlessly, the radios all rang with the voice of Peter Haskett.

He could never prove it was me, of course. But he knew.

Heh.

(Length? I'm pretty sure he was doing steroids, so I would bet that it had shriveled away by the time I encountered him.)
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 18:56, 3 replies)

Mr Loon..
You are an evil genius with far too much time on your hands.
( girlinthehole, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:57, closed)

we call it
"Short man syndrome". Or "SMS" when we're conversing around them.

(It goes over their heads, arf!)
(puerile is really getting into seagulls lately., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 23:45, closed)

Right over their heads!
So if they do happen to get it, better have shin guards on and an athletic cup in case they punch upward...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 25 Jan 2008, 1:16, closed)