Rusty Saber: Annoying people can inspire cynicism

Editor's note: SBJ columnist Joe McAdoo is on vacation. The following is an excerpt from his book "McAdoo About Nothing."

A few readers have accused me of being a cynic. Without doubt, my regular readers know this is a false label. Me? A cynic? No way. Well, maybe on occasion I show a slight trace of cynicism. But only slight ones.

The above qualifier is because what follows may be seen by some as just another edition of Mr. Cynic's Neighborhood. You be the judge.

While I like people in general, there are some that are fingernails scraped across the blackboard of my life. I'm not very tolerant of time wasters. If this is cynicism, so be it. Here are some of the time wasters that set my teeth on edge:

Mocha Maniacs are people who pour so much sugar and cream into their coffee that it ceases to be coffee. It may have a slight mocha tinge to it, but it's surely not coffee. (I drink my coffee black, the way God intended. Had God intended cream and sugar to be dumped into coffee, he would have put cows and cane sugar fields up in the Andes.)

But it isn't that these folks insist on ruining their coffee that riles me; it is the way certain ones do it. They are the ones who doctor up their coffee at an occasion where a coffee line has formed. Mocha Maniacs create their foul-tasting gruel in front of the dispenser; no one else can get around the Mocha Maniac until the horrible concoction is mixed.

One at a time he will tap a packet of sugar against the table, rip open the top, pour in the sugar. Over and over the process is repeated. Tap, rip, pour. Tap, rip, pour. When the coffee becomes almost solid sugar, the cream follows.

If the host has provided a cream pitcher, its contents are dumped into the sludge. If not, another version of tap, rip, pour is played with creamer packages.

When the Mocha Maniac is finished, a huge mound of sugar and creamer wrappers are piled in front of the dispenser. By the time the Mocha Maniac has removed himself from the line, I really need a cup of coffee to steady my nerves.

Void Fillers are the ones who are compelled to speak up any time even the slightest bit of conversational silence occurs. At formal meetings, the Void Filler throws in his 2 cents worth, even when that is a highly inflated price.

I have yet to run across a true-believing Void Filler who adds anything of substance to a meeting, except to cause it to last longer. The void opens and the Void Filler is driven by some unseen demon to fill it up with useless, time-wasting talk.

The Time Bender is a sibling under the skin to the Void Filler. He or she bends time and expands it. A Time Bender performs this time-expanding magic with phrases like "as it were," "If you will," "in my humble opinion."

You've heard Time Benders say something like, "Imagine, if you will, the following scenario whereby, in my humble opinion, the bold strokes this organization should and must, if you will, persue, if it is to maintain the high standards, as it were..." On and on it goes. Had Lincoln been a Time Bender, the Gettysburg Address would have taken two hours to deliver, and no one would have been awake at its end.

Space Eaters do just that, eat up space. Wherever you go, whatever the occasion, there, too, is the Space Eater. He or she will be the first person you see when you arrive. Should you not go somewhere and ask who was there, the Space Eater's name will surely come up.

It appears that events can't be held without the Space Eaters. I wonder how Space Eaters accomplish anything. They never seem to work; they are too busy eating up space. You may have already made the connection that Space Eaters can also be Void Fillers and Time Benders, and probably are.

Unless they drink their coffee black, they are probably Mocha Maniacs too. What better way to eat up space than in the coffee line. Surely, even my severest critics can no longer accuse me of being a cynic.

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)