First a bit of back story… I’m a pretty easy going person, so my knee jerk reaction if someone can’t do something or doesn’t have what I need is, “No worries.” And I almost always mean it.
Last week at work I was typing that exact phrase into a chat window in response to a co-worker, when it struck me as funny if — instead of saying “no worries” — I actually wrote back: “I HATE YOU.” Don’t ask me why, but that completely tickled my funny bone.
I was still giggling at the thought when a work buddy chatted me, so I had to explain why I was laughing. The great thing? He completely cracked up too. We immediately both adopted the phrase (but only in response to each other), but used it infrequently enough that each time it popped up it caught me off-guard and struck me as hilarious all over again.
I encourage you to try it, but only with a work buddy. If you do it to a non-buddy, they will think you are an asshole.
Anyway. So last night, I thought I would share this tip with the world (by which I mean the small handful of people who follow my twitter feed out of sympathy). Except, instead of posting it where you’re supposed to tweet, I sent a direct message to one of my followers. This is what I wrote:
Work tip: the next time you’re about to type “No worries” in response to someone who can’t help you, instead type “I HATE YOU.”
That triple cracked me up. First, because it’s just a hilarious tip to share. Second, because it looked like I had personally sought them out for these words of wisdom. Third, this person had reached out to me about six months ago, asking if a restaurant they represent could quote my review on their website.
Steal my content? I will cut you.
I had given them permission, and thought I was pretty cool about it. Instead of bartering for a credit at the restaurant, I simply asked that they link to my blog to drive traffic back to the source of the original article. The tweeter said she’d check and see if it was possible.
Did they link? No. Did they post the entire content of my review on the company’s website? They did. Did I get a kick that it was in the “media” section, between two legitimate restaurant reviews written by real people, while mine had to be attributed to someone named Pithy Pants? I did.
[Note: they’ve apparently since wised up and realized I’m in no way an official restaurant critic or journalist, because when I just checked the site, that entire section was under construction. Maybe they’re running background checks on all the content they repurposed from strangers?]
In any case, I like that after six months of not communicating, the way I reached out to this person was via a direct message giving her tips on how to be awkwardly aggressive. And even sweeter? That our previous exchange had ended with her promising to look into linking to my blog, and my writing back three simple words:
Cool. No worries.
pithypants 