Mucus McSnotbag Or Imagining Brian Going All Rainman

Today started out far too early, as I woke up a bit before my alarm was due to go off.  Too close to when it was set to go off to make it worth trying to get any more sleep.
And so I got up, did the whole morning thing, and was soon on my way to HQ for training.
One good thing about the recent round of layoffs:  a lot more decent parking spaces available at HQ.
(Word is that there are bigger, even bloodier cuts coming in December.  Yay!  The daily fucking uncertainty just never ends!)
As per usual I was a bit early, so I stopped in the cafeteria to grab a quick nutritious breakfast (read:  a donut).  After making my selection I headed to the empty register and waited for someone to come along and ring me up.  Around the corner I noticed a heavy, shabbily-dressed woman burning (based on the smell) a bagel in the toaster oven.
In addition to looking a bit like a homeless person, the woman was sniffling and coughing very loudly and phlegmily in a way that was making my breakfast look less and less appealing with each sloppy-sounding sniff.
Eventually someone came to ring me up (and apologized for making me wait), I paid, and went to sit at a table.
The bagel-burning schlub – I guess she was too congested to smell it burning – approached the register to pay for her bagel, revealing that along with her mucus-related problems she also had an extremely thick, almost satirically thick, southern accent, and while she was there she let out  this throaty, phlegmy sound which I couldn’t possibly describe and which will no doubt haunt my nightmares for years to come.
(Am I making it clear that this woman was a walking horror show, pretty much offensive to all of the senses?  At least  I’m guessing that she’d be as offensive to touch, smell, and taste as she was to sight and sound.)
Anyway, I ate my breakfast and made my way to the training room, only to discover that, to my horror, the snot-filled woman from the cafeteria was one of the people taking the class.
Once class started she asked the instructor a question that demonstrated that not only was she a disturbing audio/visual phenomenon she was also dumb as a post.
The woman who came in and sat to my right was extremely cute (and married), so that served as a good balance to Mucus McSnotbag…as much as anything could balance things out, at any rate.
(By the way, Scott can – and no doubt will – attest to what a nightmarish figure this woman is.)
Throughout the class McSnotbag continued to sniffle and snort, occasionally breaking up the routine with a nice juicy coughing spell.
Seriously, if you’re in that kind of condition, just stay the hell home.  You might have my sympathy for being sick if you weren’t right there making me want to lose my breakfast with the noises of your various secretions.  Just because you’re sick that doesn’t mean you have to take it out on the rest of us.  And it’s not like you would have been missing work; you had the day off for training anyway.
The one thing that might have made the whole experience entertaining, though, is if Brian had been there.  He has this borderline autistic aversion to the noises people make.  He’s mostly bothered by loud chewing, but I think the sheer volume of noises coming from this woman would have driven him to a Rainman-esque freakout that would have been a joy to behold.
Speaking of Brian, Kathleen was supposed to be in the class today as well (I had no idea that she was going to be in when I signed up for it), but didn’t make it in as a result of the impact that being away for a week had on her sleep schedule.
McSnotbag wasn’t the only dim bulb in the class today, and I observed a disturbing phenomenon that I’ve seen all too many times in my company.
See, I work for a technology company.  Computers are at the very core of pretty much everything we do.
However, so many of our employees don’t have even a basic level of computer literacy.  It would be funny if it weren’t so sad (and irritating).
During class today the cute chick sitting next to me – and I’m not exaggerating – needed help from the instructor in order to open a file.
Let me repeat that with emphatic punctuation.
She.  Needed.  Help.  To.  Open.  A.  File.
It would be one thing if her level of computer illiteracy were an exception, but it’s the rule.
So many people working for this company have a knowledge of computers that’s limited to using the specific application that they use every day, with no real general knowledge of how to actually navigate or perform simple tasks.  
They can open Excel and edit that spreadsheet they have to edit every day, surf the Web, and maybe play Solitaire.  But move a file to another location, or rename a file, or even open understand what a file is?  No chance.
When I see things like that I realize that it’s no wonder that we’re in such dire straits that we need to eliminate 5,000+ employees.