i know this isn't healthy, i just don't actually care

Years and years ago I dated a business/history major A Type overachiever--this is relevant--who was going to be a millionare by the time he was thirty or somesuch. Now he owns his own business that got featured in CNN, which makes me boggle because--I mean, wow, I was apparently really goddamn amazing in bed because I don't think we ever so much as shared a working thought. There's really no other explanation.

This is, in fact, something I ponder sometimes.

Anyway, he was also a natural salesman.

After I started ill-fated work in retail--do not even ask--he had the idea that this was a teachable character moment in salesmanship, and he tried to introduce me to the hard sell.

Now, over a decade later, I realize I had at some point internalized that lesson; my current defects on the programs read like ice selling above the arctic circle. I am in the zone of breaking them down into terrifying detail not only explaining the problem, but also why the problem is bad, with bullet points, all the reasons that the problem can't be rectified by other than a code change--with numbers--and occasionally, I break everything into small words. I am attacking their arguments like I am going after tuna and the dolphins are tragic but necessary casualties.

I officially have a "Could you check me for being condescending" alert that makes my lead go "DO NOT POST THAT" and dash over to read because yeah, I'm at the point where I am flirting with "YOU ARE DEVELOPERS. YOU ARE NOT NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS WHO USE A COMPUTER. NEITHER AM I BUT I LIVE AMONG THEM UNOBSERVED AND I KNOW THEIR STRANGE CUSTOMS. THEY WILL NOT DO THIS SHIT. THEY DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. I WILL TAKE THIS TO MY FLIST AND YOU ARE MALE AND UNCOMPREHENDING OF HUMANKIND; NO ONE WILL AGREE WITH YOU."

Which is, granted, unfair, because if I use a lot of words and then sometimes get a normal human being there and translate between them, they get it! Also, it's possible I have become a little dismissive. And possibly hostile.

My last two defects had fifteen, four, and twenty-two separate points each with illustrative screenshots of before, during, and after. They are going to light me on fire if I don't hide in a new cubicle soon. One was a step by step of what a Normal Human Person on a Computer has to do to make what they want to do work. It's surreal.

And shaming because writing it out I had to go and do it and then stop and go, okay, wait, write that down because yes, that's kind of important even though I do that when I first configure my computer.

Then the Normal Human Beings do this:

NHB: ...what is that about?
Seperis: Three pixels off left. It's throwing the entire page.
NHB: You're serious.
Seperis: *takes out ruler and piece of white paper for comparison, then hits print*
NHB: What did I say about wanting to be educated?
Seperis: What did I say about asking what I'm defecting?

I don't think hiding in a different cubicle is going to cut it when my coworkers hold me down for the fire-lighting. I want to be remembered as dying for consistent markup. You should see my reaction to inconsistent font size. Yes, eleven is bigger than ten and I see what you did there.

I am this person. Somewhere my teenage self is crying hysterically and has no idea. But whatever, my teenage self totally had no clue the horror of the emergence of geocities and Everyone Color Their Backgrounds Crazy Like. I have scars. They still bleed.