Level 2

Continued from Level 1.

I think I can summarize Level 2 with one word: People. Okay, I've been accused of being too much of a generalist, so let's use two words: Stupid People. I'm fairly certain that without them, none of us would ever realize that Level 2 even existed. Stupid people are the red pill to our Level 1 Matrix. Their presence makes us aware that we are, in fact, stuck in a real world with real people...and they suck. You know who I'm talking about:

• The guy in the break room who won't shut up about his amazing feats of skill on the softball field


• The co-worker who asks you the same inane question over and over, knowing full well you sent them the answer via email the last time they asked


• That guy with the blog who stops over and asks, "Hey, wud ya think of my latest?"


• The manager who has no clue what you do, but gives you the "atta boy" anyway


• The woman who talks about herself in the third-person


• The peer who couldn't do their job correctly if it only involved breathing and an occasional eye twitch


• The woman who doesn't "get" Dilbert


• (Need I go on?)

No amount of downloaded Jujitsu skills are going to help with these people. Best thing you can do is make a run for a hard line. Which reminds me of a good Level 2 story. There was this girl I used to work with. Let's call her Tracy...because that was her name. I know this not just because we were introduced when she started, but also because she used to refer to herself in the third-person. As in, (while on the phone with a family member), "Hi...yeah...how are you? Good. Hey, guess who's pregnant? Tracy's pregnant." She was a nut job. She also loved to gab. Mondays were the worst because she'd trap people in their own cubes while she reviewed, in excruciating detail, the events of her weekend. Generally it was like watching an episode of the "The View" without the bottle of Vodka in your hand.

I hadn't put all the pieces together yet about the five levels, but I knew that this woman was pain and pain is bad. So I did what any good problem solver might do. I got creative and invented the phone save. It's like a kick save in hockey only instead of a stupid puck you're dealing with a stupid....um...person. Now I'm sure that the phone save has been discovered, independantly, in almost every office building across the country, but in case you haven't heard of it before you have my permission to use it. (Now I can't remember if it was actually my idea, but I'm writing the history, 'nough said).

It goes something like this:

1. Super-annoying person enters your co-workers cube


2. You hear the quiver in your co-worker's voice as he say "hi"


3. The dialog begins and it reminds you of a late, late talk show monologue by the love child of Fran Dresher and John Madden


4. You feel guilty because you're just thankful it's not happening in your cube


5. After 10 minutes, you can't take it any more...you pick up the phone


6. You dial your co-worker's number...it rings...you set the handset down, you've done your part. It's all up to him now.


7. He picks up the phone and says "hello." Silence..Come on, this is your out....

Now, if done properly my co-worker would have begun a conversation on the phone (with no one) and simply cupped the mouth piece, looked over his shoulder and said, "I have to take this." The pain would have ended. Unfortunately it went something like this: "Hmphf, no one there." Click. The droning begins again. I hang my head. Apparently he wasn't around for the last three phone saves.

It's obvious to me that the phone save was simply a mechanism I created to make myself feel like I could take back some of what I lost when I left Level 1. Stupid people really annoy me, doubly so at work. Guns....I'm going to need lots of guns. I had to take the fight to them or lose my sanity. Problem was I didn't fully understand there were other Matrices, other Levels. I heard footsteps....the agents were coming. Do you here that? It's the sound of inevitability. It's the sound of Level 3.

Level 2: The introduction of people, their problems, their idiosyncrasies, and their stupidity creates an unstable and frustrating work environment. Daily interactions with these people begin to unravel the foundation of your Level 1 Nirvana. Getting out of bed in the morning becomes more of a challenge. Your lunch breaks are spent googling "legal rulings on justifiable homicide". You look for projects to keep yourself busy to avoid small talk with the riff-raff. Although you still enjoy it, work seems more like work.

On to Level 3