Damn. I loves me some internet. Surely I do.

Now, in a free society, this post would be heaping full of links to the interwebs. But, for the sake of lessons learned and any kind of fall out for anyone that is not me, you’ll just have to trust in the story without the link love.

Tuesday of this week, as I am wiling away time clicking through budget spreadsheets and maintaining the meager daily existence that is my employment, M., an occasional diversion through electronic data transmissions, shoots me an email. The email was a forward from a dude who is a consultant at his company or, as you will read, was a consultant at his company. The contractor man had a nose that was full on disjointed, because, I gather from the corporate-wide email to which he appended his message, that consultants aren’t invited to some parties.

Now, here’s a side note. I actually have to work with contractors where I work, and actually have to work with the lawyers and the consultants themselves to get the terms of the contracts just so. One way my employer manages that whole blurry line of corporate communications among the folks that aren’t on the payroll is to refuse to recognize them. Consultants ain’t got no email. Period. No questions. One answer, and no question then that they just don’t get the corporate-wide messages. It’s up to us folks on the ground that work with them directly to point out the passing free lunch.

But, back to M.’s company. It’s much larger and much more corporate, business-like. They have consultants woven into the landscape doing all those kind of things that independent contractors might do at a corporation. In this case, the guy’s a graphic, web design dude. Like any number of graphic, web design dudes, although judging by a photo on one of several of his websites, perhaps a tad douchier than your average dude.

So, this guy, this avenger of the right and just, stands up for contractors everywhere and takes it upon himself to “Reply All” to the corporate-wide announcement for the shindig to gripe that it specifies “Contractors Excluded.”

Full disclosure. I’ve been that administrator who has to send out emails to a wide group and maybe make some negatives like “Contractors Excluded” known. I pride myself on two things in this life, not writing all sucky and shit and not being a total dick. Lucky for me, then, I’ve mostly been able to finesse the language away from full-on offending anyone. But, I can tell you from the real-life experience I’ve lived, people have an infinite capacity to find something to bitch about in any mass mailing. It’s the law that at least one person will complain, with a geometric progression growing to n+1 as the size of the recipient list grows.

People suck, and in my work lifetime, I’ve seen that suck grow alongside the popularity of email. You used to have to get up out of your seat and walk over and talk to someone or maybe pick up a telephone to get your complaint on.

So, you can probably guess as to where my allegiances were when I read the dude’s email. Mistake Numero Uno, the first, he called out the woman who sent the invitation email by name. He also called her out by deed, indicating to the entire corporation that he had tried last year (presumably for the same end-of-the-year party) to address the “Contractors Excluded” language. Of course, though, like all self-righteous pricks, he didn’t actually say how he tried last year.

Why is that mistake the first, the premier, error? Because, never, ever, ever fuck with the administrator who’s so close to the top of the food chain that she is the one sending out corporate-wide emails inviting folks to a party. The one who arranges events for the whole company probably sits within rock-throwing distance to people with Cs in their titles, those Cs stand for “Chief.” The email sender wouldn’t have chief in her title, but she’s bound to be on a first name basis, and know the names of the husbands, wives, children, dogs and hamsters, of the people who do. She talks with them; you, angry consultant, probably don’t.

The Number 2 mistake, but perhaps the mistake that truly removes you from naive crusader for a good cause to King Douche in a land of douchebags, hit my lizard brain before I fully understood the weight of the words of the email. Apparently, to you, angry contractor, not getting invited to a company party by a company that doesn’t actually employ you is the same as Jim Crow. Yup, the dude actually wrote to the entire company that his lack of an invite was just like separate bathrooms and water fountains and being sent to the back of the bus.

Let’s review that one. You work as an independent, self-employed graphic artist/web designer. You, per your grinning douche picture on your website, which it is fucking killing me not to post here or at least link, you are very likely of the Caucasian color scheme and be-goateed to boot. You work at a large, diverse company in one of the most racially diverse counties in the area. And, YOU, fucking compare yourself to people who ACTUALLY SUFFERED in our recent history?

Godwin’s Law talks about the frequency by which internet arguments devolve into Hitler comparisons. There needs to be a corollary law of wrongness for martyrs who compare their tiny inconveniences to Rosa Parks. Personally, I think it’s OK to turn a fire hose on anyone who makes a false comparison to the Civil Rights Movement. Being a contractor not invited to a party is not anything at all like having a separate bathroom, you fucking asshole.

It was from that metaphor alone I predicted that M.’s company would soon have one less contractor.

The much lesser mistake, mistake # 3, which for me was the big comedic pay off was the email sig. If one is to send an email to some where in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 people, based on the company’s size, one might want to pause and really think about what your email sig says about you. In this case, it says all of your several fucktarded online personae with links and names of multiple Facebook, AIM, Twitter and ‘blog identities.

Of the many, my fave was the Twitter feed for the account that seems to be your official company site for your business under which you contract. Early in the Twitter feed, around the same time M. forwarded your email to me, and we laughed at you, you predicted it would be a fun day. Thank you, it was. Then there are cracks about contractors “Included,” because, yup, hardy har, they excluded you. The denouement, of course, your bitterness about the company eliminating the complainer instead of fixing the problem.

Oh, so hard, to be so right, in such a cruel world.

As a companion piece, was your personal, casual Twitter feed. I don’t know what I’m digging more. Your conviction that you were martyred for “doing the right thing,” or that them turning off your remote computer access. That VPN note might win the funny by a hair, because the rumor was already out in M.’s company that they had indeed cut your computer.

It is so wrong of me to laugh. I have been fired. I have made mistakes on the world wide webs. I’ll probably continue to make such mistakes. But, at least, all of the company-wide emails I have ever sent have been mildly amusing and professionally worded. Although, i might have made an exception and something around excluding you my name.

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