Lot of Ranting lately… either the public is getting progressively dumber or I’m stressed to my maximum limit which tends to make me cranky. Given that I spent the last eight months here, and didn’t have much to Rant about, I’m betting my stress level has worn down my stupidity tolerance. What stress you ask? I had my taxes done, spent three weekends packing (or drunk), am blowing away all sense of the budget I had in mind for townhouse and home improvements, had my Jetta hit in a parking lot, and have fought with more machines at work (and lost) than I think I have for the last two years combined.

Anyway, since it’s still the Lenten season – and today is Friday – I decided to pop over to Red Robin for lunch today. On my way back from picking up more moving boxes, actually… it just doesn’t end. It was there that I treated to a nice reminder that there are some stupid people on this planet.

Since the place was packed, I sat myself at the bar. I didn’t have a book with me – I finished my last one and the rest are packed already – so I figured I could watch a little MLB Spring Baseball on ESPN at the bar. The place is loud, but there’s closed captioning on the box, so yay for me. A woman comes in and sits three stools down from me, while talking to herself, quite loudly. I took a look in her ear, and sure enough, there’s a headset bud for a cell phone.

Well that’s OK, right? I mean it’s a bar, the place is loud: she was only being slightly louder than she would have been talking to a physically present human. Blah blah blah… it became obvious that it was a business call. After a few minutes of her conversation her call ended and my food came.

So she makes another call. A business call. An as loud if not louder business call and a more animated one. This would be annoying, but again, it’s a Friday, people work and it’s lunch time. Given her volume, though, it’s hard to just ignore her… and that’s when I notice that she’s talking a bid that she’s submitted for her company. And she kept talking about all of this “secret” information to the person on the phone.

Secret information? Yep. Classic comment: “I shouldn’t tell anyone, but I can trust you, so I can tell you.” Sure, you trust the person on the phone… but do you trust me? Do you trust the guy next to you? Do you trust the twelve people in the bar area? Moron! It’s a Friday, it’s lunch hour and most of the people in there work! My belt was below the bar, so my Microsoft badge was hidden… what if she’s bidding against Microsoft for a job? Better yet, what if I was in on the bidding and I now knew what her bid included? Worse, what if she works for Microsoft and she’s hurting the company I work for?

She was oblivious to dirty looks and exaggerated stares: she just kept on yammering through four different phone calls… all of the business. All of the about “private” information. I was tempted to repeat some of the information back to her, before I left the place, but I left it alone… I just hope she doesn’t work for Microsoft – we have enough gossip about our company… the press doesn’t need any help from this woman or other people like her!

Don’t be this person, for you and your company’s sake.