The Day of Douches: The time I got to interact with every type of douche in one day

Seriously why do things always happen to me? The coffee machine was broken so I decided to make a ‘mocha’ using instant coffee, Milo and milk and warming this mixture in the microwave. It was all going to plan and it looked like such a delicious drink…but then I put it in the microwave and I lost concentration as I was contemplating yet another pertinent issue -  I lost concentration thinking about whether the person whose job it is on television to provide ‘amp up’ voiceovers in ads for reality TV shows like, “Tonight on Formal Wars [ie. the greatest Australian reality TV series ever. Seriously it is you should check it out. It’s on Thursdays at 11pm] we find out if Sheree will hate her parents for the rest….of…her…life…for choosing black pumps rather than silver diamante 12-inch shoes she’s been dreaming of FOREVERRRRR….[cue dramatic music]”. Anyway I was in the midst of wondering whether this person has a fulfilled life or whether he walks around so amped up that even the most mundane task, like microwaving a cup of milk, could not be done without dramatic music, which he needs to be continuously playing to survive… 

Anyway whilst I was deep in thought contemplating this very complex issue, the cup of ‘mocha’ exploded in the microwave and went everywhere. I then had to clean the microwave and transfer the remainder of my ‘mocha’ to a new cup…but not before I VERY surreptitiously placed the old cup in the dishwasher, keen that NO ONE would see that I was the one placing that cup in the dishwasher. You see when you mix instant coffee with Milo, it creates an odd yet distinctly familiar brown colour…and when you combine these ingredients with milk it creates a lumpy thick liquid….which when heated will explode all over your cup to make it look like someone shat on your cup. Yep I made a turd cup.

I placed quickly placed the turd cup in the dishwasher, put the dishwasher on even though it was on the only item in there, whacked the ‘Dishwasher in Use’ sticker and ran away.

In the end the whole experience was rather ironic given the day I had – evidently if days could have motifs, the motif for that day definitely would have been ‘turd cup’ given how many turds and douches I managed to encounter. It was almost as if a higher power [I hope you appreciate my efforts to be secular and inoffensive], anyway it was as if a higher power let rip a massive hippo fart [if you don’t know what I’m talking about please see this] and out exploded an epidemic of douchebags.

First there was the phone call from ‘Blocked’. Now in investment banking world this invariably meant a recruiter, however when you’re on the other side in corporate, a phone call from ‘Blocked’ can be anything from a business call to Kochie from the Sunrise team calling you to say that you’ve won tickets to see One Direction…so obviously you’re going to take it! Unfortunately it was not the business nor was it Kochie, it was a recruiter. When I refused to buy her wares (ie. some boutique advisory job), her little ‘rare investment banking opportunity’ infomercial took a douchey turn and she proceeded to lecture me on how I’d be ‘stale’ anyway given I was working in corporate. Hmmm. Interesting. Usually I would’ve launched into a tirade right back at her, questioning whether she thought she was ‘stale’ from spruiking the same ‘boutique advisory job’ for last 2 years and how she was coping given her job can be done by a simple search engine [seek.com woo hoo!], thereby making her redundant. But on this occasion I just left it.

Anyway post Turd Cup and Turd Recruiter [yes making these official titles now], I then had the glorious pleasure of having lunch seated between a couple of junior bankers at a luncheon. The night before I had prayed so hard that I would be seated next to bankers, and low and behold my dreams were granted. For 2 hours I felt beholden to so much name dropping, I actually thought both of them had some sort of Name Drop Plopping diarrhoea [yes that’s a defined term too which interestingly has the right number of syllables to substitute lyrics for the Guns n’ Roses’ ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’…ie. “Name Drop Plopping on Heaven’s Door, hey heyyyyy” etc.].

Anyway both were analysts. The one on the right kept referencing how he was working on a large entertainment industry deal (*cough* *10* *cough*) and that late one night ‘Gina called’ [you know because one of the richest people in Australia will call the 2^nd year analyst with his changes to a presentation]. As he was talking I wondered whether it would ever be socially acceptable to punch someone in the face as they were speaking to make them be quiet…I think at the next election I will run for the Senate and my only policy will be to legislate (gently yet firmly) punching douchebags to make them shut them up…I’ll just work out some complicated preference deal with the Pirate Party and I should get up.

The other analyst was equally entertaining because he seemed to suffer from this bizarre tick, whereby whenever he dropped a name he would also say their qualifications. For example, “I was just having lunch with Herb Elliot AC MBE the other day”. Apparently by blurting out the random letters after the person’s name he was trying to demonstrate that this person was clearly someone serious and I think may either be a doctor or have sort of affiliation with the Queen [?? *shrug* why the fuck would I care?].

He was also starting some business on the side which meant that he apparently now has “an incredibly large network and might be one of the most connected people in Australia”. At this point I looked at him and felt like asking if he wanted a Cool-Runnings-slow-clap or just a general applause to say ‘well done on being able to make small chit chat with lots of irrelevant people, rather than concentrating on running your start-up so that it’s actually profitable’. In my experience, the people who talk about the expansiveness of their networks, this is often a clue to say that they don’t actually have any friends because their douchiness and need to use any acquaintance for their personal advantage makes them Too Turdy to be around […hmm I don’t think I’ve matstered this whole defined term thing yet…I think ‘Too Turdy’ just sounds like I’m making fun of small children with speech impediments who are trying to say ‘two thirty’]. Anyway these obsessive networkers are basically akin to the ‘friend’ who asks you to take a photo of them to post to Instagram only then they have you standing there taking photos for 30 minutes, sometimes looking at the camera other times looking pensively into the distance, until they get the perfect level of ‘drop-shoulder’ pose and correct oversexed-to-cutesy ratio [otherwise known as the ‘Miley Cyrus Pre and Post VMAs Index’]. In the end they’re too caught up with how they look to realise what they’re doing to an apparent friend.

Gee, what an exhausting day. Clearly the Turd Cup did it’s duty to warn me of how my day was going to go. I wish I listened to it more and just stayed at home. It’s almost like I now need a douche [in the French sense…gotta love a French pun] to get the stench of turd and douche-bagginess off me.