HOW TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE

If you have been around here for a while, you will know that I am more than a little obsessed with the holiday season. I love Cheer. I cannot get enough. Soon, I’ll be opening the MJ Holiday Workshop, as I do every year, to distribute CHEERFUL things, like books and cards.

And in the past, I have often liked to use this special time of year to give out advice. I thought I’d do a little of that today.

It seems now that when I am working a lot, I check in with Facebook once or twice a day, as it is an excellent way of seeing what and how everyone is doing. The other day, I asked people if they had any questions that needed answering. I got many excellent questions. Here are a few of them.

Julia asks:
is there a bad reason to leave and never come back?

Well . . . and I’m not saying I have any direct experience with this . . . but say you burned the place down by accident because you were decorating a makeshift disco with hundreds of tea lights and you didn’t know your spray glitter was an accelerant and the whole place went up like Edward Cullen riding a rocket on a sunny day. That’s a really good reason not to come back.

Faith asks:
do you accept apprentices of awesome?

Yes.

Tim asks:
How should one handle bitchy customers at work?

I have held many jobs in which I dealt with the public. I remember well dealing with bitchy, longwinded, annoying, unfriendly people who have come to take your time and ruin your life. This kind of customer is impossible to dismiss. They don’t care about you, or the other people, or common decency. They’ll scream, they’ll throw money in your face, knock things off shelves. They’ll make twenty people wait in line behind them while they rant and rave and announce that they don’t care. You can never be rude back, sadly, as that just adds fuel to the fire (and see the above questions for where that will get you).

This kind of anti-Cheer behavior must be stopped. I used to employ many methods for doing this. Here is one of my favorites. It never failed me.

Say you work at Target, at the customer service counter. For the last twenty minutes, you have watched a horrible woman screaming about the fact that the store has run out of the Hannah Montana Rockstar Powerdrill and Bake Sets that were advertised in the circular. She has been taking out her wrath on an innocent checkout girl. The checkout girl, reduced to tears, pointed at your counter in defeat. Now it is your turn for punishment. But no. You will not go down quietly. You need to be one step ahead of her. Before she even gets to your desk, run around so that you are standing in front of her on the same side of the counter. Bow low at the waist and pretend to take off a hat.

From this point on, speak entirely in Renaissance Fair speak. Wring your hands together and say something like, “Please, good madam, speak to me that I may absorb the gist of your need!”

This should set her a little off-balance, but she’ll keep rambling on. Whatever she says, just look shocked and exclaim “Most injurious, sweet lady! Most assuredly injurious!” Offer her a chair. If there is no chair, offer your own back as a bench. Say, “Fie on this! Fie, fie! Come. Together we shall investigate this injustice and rectify all that seeks rectification.”

Lead her away. Make sure to keep stopping and bowing and that you always walk a few steps behind. Go to the toy section, but to the wrong aisle. Proceed to take every single toy off the shelf and ask, “Doth this be the object of merriment?” Whenever she looks like she is tiring of you, jump up and down and exclaim, “Curseth my pumpkin head! I have possessed the knowledge all this while! I will bring the bauble henceforth!” Disappear. Come back with a toaster oven.

After an hour or so, when you have exhausted all the objects in the aisle, scream at the top of your lungs and say, “Fair lady! Fair lady! Do you hear the sound of carriage wheels on the road and the steps of a hundred mighty horses? I THINK THE QUEEN IS COMING!” Run out of the store and never come back.

Tobias asks:
Maureen, where does one meet cute nerdy gay guys who like to watch Dr. Who and House?

Tobias, everything you need to know—all of the essential skills of attracting the ladies or the mens—can be found in the works of 1990s manboy band, Color Me Badd. Color Me Badd was so bad that they had an extra “d” on their name. What did the “d” stand for? No one knew. That was just one more thing that made Color Me Badd so very badd. These guys were so goodd with the opposite sex that they could have all the consonants they wanted.



Color Me Badd

The theme of every single Color Me Badd song, as far as I can tell, is how much they want to get wit chu. Their hit song “I Want to Sex You Up” is more or less the only textbook you will ever need to learn the Art of Love. They are very on-message. What do they want to do? They want to sex you up. The song never deviates from the theme of sexing you up. We are never left scratching our heads and wondering what is going on. Sexing up is going on.

Lines like “we can do it until we both wake up” and “we can make love until we both drown” made many people think Color Me Badd was a little confused about what “sexing up” was. But that’s the baddness of Color Me Badd—no one knows what they’re talking about, really! You just know that it a). is smooooove and b.) involves really big pants.



I think it could only help you to learn every move and line of this video, get the biggest pants you can find, and head to the nearest con. Slide on up to the debate about who the eleventh Doctor will be, and at the first pause bust into your move. But you will, of course, have changed the lyrics of the song to reflect the occasion, so you will sing something like:

Want to get you in my Tardis
Just like that Rose Tyler
Show you my big blue police box
And my sonic screwdriver

By the time you are done, EVERYONE will be attracted to you. It is merely up to you to select the appropriate nerd.

Kayla asks:
I'm trying to compose a short, fun little song for kids....and I'm not for sure what it should be about. Giraffes who love giraffes? penguins? llamas? I just don't know. What do you think? :)

Back when I was an editor, I had an assistant named Cartography Jones (not his real name, but a name I bestowed on him). I spent the majority of my time at work trying to make Carto’s life better, and one of the ways I did this was by hiding pictures of lemurs all over his desk. Dozens and dozens of pictures of lemurs. He would come in in the morning, tired and bleary-eyed, and slowly notice the round, gleaming eyes of a lemur peering from just over his monitor, or just under his mouse, or on the fourth page of a report, or out of an “urgent e-mail of instructions” I had sent him. Sometimes the lemurs were under his mug. Sometimes they were in a book, waiting to be discovered weeks later. Sometimes the lemurs were in his lunch, carefully placed just under the wrapper of his sandwich when he stepped away from his desk. Sometimes he would even go home and find lemurs in his bag, his hat, his laptop. I buried pictures of lemurs deep in actual work files, attached them to spreadsheets, planted them in the conference room . . ..

There are many pictures of lemurs on the internet!



A LEMUR

Because I was his boss, Carto knew that the many, many pictures of lemurs that haunted his every waking moment were important, and good for his personal and professional development. Sure, they made him shaky and screamy and sometimes he would beg for NO MORE LEMURS, but I would just smile and nod and send him more important e-mails, only some of which were full of the moony, crazed faces of lemurs. What I was trying to show him is that sometimes, life gives you lemurs. Now, I know that it sort of follows to say something like, “When life gives you lemurs, you should make lemurade.” But there is no such thing as lemurade, and if there was, it would be disgusting.

The main point is that it is awesome to be someone’s boss because you can send them 2000 pictures of lemurs and there is nothing they can do about it. So stay in school and become a boss!

(You are probably thinking that this means that I want your song to be about lemurs but I would actually like it to be about penguins.)

Ariel asks:
How might one go about getting free Starbucks on a daily basis?

I have a plan that will not only get you free Starbucks every day, it will also SPREAD CHEER! Pick a local Starbucks, the busiest one you can find. If it has disaffected, emo staffers, so much the better. Purchase one (1) shiny holiday sweater. If it lights up or has tinkling bells, again, so much the better. Also get one bag of discounted holiday chocolate from the drugstore. Let this get a little melty and misshapen, and then put it in the refrigerator to harden it in its deformed state. Also, if you can, get your hands on a slide whistle.

Now you are ready for action.

Position yourself in the middle of the Starbucks with a large smile on your face. Wish everyone who comes in a happy holiday. Then, when people are least expecting it, break into Jingle Bells. Don’t go for quality—go for Cheer. Use that slide whistle as much as you can. Emulate this sound:



Leave the store abruptly. Come back again 15 minutes later. Stand around for a few minutes, and then sing again. Make it look like you are going for the door, but then pause and come back in. You must build a sense of anxiety in the staff, who are now watching your every move. Make sure you are always smiling. Pass out a round of deformed candy to customers and staff. Do this all day.

While you stand there, try to figure out who runs the place. Avoid the manager. The manager will be looking for the most legitimate way of throwing you out. What you want is the Assistant Manager, the person who has probably been there the longest and hates you the most. Go up to this person and say, as quietly as possible, “One grande eggnog latte and I am gone. Leave it outside in five minutes or I come back with the accordion.”

Coffee is cheap, and one eggnog latte is definitely worth the price of peace. So while the manager is looking through the corporate manual, the Assistant Manager will be brewing you one hot, delicious eggnog latte. Leave at once with it.

Come back the next day. This time, don’t go in. Make periodic passes by the window, holding up your slide whistle happily. Go away. Return, and sit quietly in the corner for an hour or so. Really build things up for your performance. When the Assistant Manager looks over (these are the people who work every day), make a drinking motion with an invisible cup and hold up one finger. You mean, “One eggnog latte.” It would be really effective at this point if you could pull out some stuffed reindeer antlers or some bells.

You may or may not need to sing at this point. Every staff has a different level of tolerance. But within a few days, you should have them to the point where they will simply hand over the eggnog latte the moment you appear. You may have to travel from store to store, but since most Starbucks seem to be located about ten feet away from each other, you can assume word has spread.

But what about after the holidays? you ask. This works even better in July!

Emily asks:
what's the best way to tie your shoes?

It is best to hire someone for this task. It is quite dangerous.

Al asks:
What happens to socks in the drier?

I answer this and several other pressing questions in Scarlett Fever.

Let’s kick off some CHEER right now. A signed Let it Snow to a random commenter! Please tell me what is going on with you, and if you have any CHEER-related problems that need solving!