Pissed off again (rant)

Just a warning that there's another rant in the following paragraphs. Feel free to skip it, I won't be offended. Really. My non rant news is that about a foot of snow blanketed the city today. It was the light, fluffy stuff, perfect for snowmen and snowball fights. With little wind, and not too cold outside, today I experienced a beautiful Boston winter's day. OK, so back to the rant...

I inadvertently pissed off a work colleague yesterday. Even now, I'm not exactly sure what the hell happened, except today he indicated that I am no longer worthy of his company. The workmate in question is a prickly character who is quite critical about many subjects, with his favourite topic being the uselessness of our boss. However he had previously been quite friendly with me, so despite his quiet, severe demeanor, we got along well, often grabbing coffee together etc. Plus his cynical hostile nature is partly due to his unhappiness with the lab and desire to leave, so I've previously excused/ignored his somewhat abrasive disposition during our interactions. He's not the most social person so we didn't interact outside of lab hours, but since his wife is overseas at the moment we recently had dinner together. All was well.

What precipitated the demise of our friendship is still unclear to me, except I know it was totally trivial and ridiculous. Basically we were talking about the pros and cons of a particular scientific technique and he kept raising a few points that I didn't understand clearly. This was due to several factors, including his imperfect English, tendency to mumble, and long-winded way of reaching his point. Whatever it was, the conversation was going in circles. Responding to his ultra passive-aggressive manner throughout the discourse, I became increasingly frustrated, but not angry, by his nonsensical speech. He became increasingly irritated, and angry, by my comments.

Anytime I tried to steer the conversation to neutral territory I was immediately cut-off by some random rant, stating that he didn't care about the point I was raising. In the beginning I got the feeling he was asking in a round about fashion for help with something about the technique we were discussing, but whenever I volunteered advice, it was instantly shot down with a haughty "You think I don't know that already". Actually, it was "I don't give a shit about that".

Anyway, it was the most insane conversation (?) I've had in a long time and it ended when someone came and asked me for help with something. His reaction to our small disagreement was ignoring me for the rest of the afternoon, despite me trying to initiate polite conversation.

This morning my attempts at friendliness were deflected with frosty disdain. I apologized to him (profusely!) if I upset him in any way, tried to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation and basically said let's forgive and forget, move on and be on friendly terms again.

He passively-aggressively declined my offer. He no longer wants to speak/lunch with/have coffee with me.

What a motherfucker.

His reasons were again confusing, but part of it was something along the lines of him not wanting to be dealing with immature people of my age (he's late 30's), which is ironically child-like I think.

Showing the true character of this one-time alleged 'friend', he remarked that he didn't give a shit about losing a friend, and that gaining another is easily done. It's amusing to me that apart from myself and his bay-buddy Ariel (who I'm very close with), he does not get along socially at all with anyone else in the lab. Ariel is away on holidays at the moment, so she is unaware of the situation, but I know that she also has been increasingly fed up with her bay-mates acid tongue, so I anticipate he will sadly have no friendly colleagues in the lab once she hears of his absurd behaviour.

I'm proud of the way I handled the situation because I didn't get baited by his provocative, and arrogantly dismissive comments during our initial "discussion". My responses were logical and I was constantly trying to defuse the escalating situation, which inexplicably seemed to make him more aggravated. After receiving his infantile silent treatment post-"discussion", I tried to reconcile the problem in a professional manner, by being apologetic, opening dialogue and trying to determine how we could move forward from the misunderstanding. Yeah, so I was basically being a "doormat" in an attempt to salvage a friendship with a complete twat. Pathetic, I know.

Unfortunately I am now internally seething with immense rage about the situation. I'm just itching to go up to him and yell right into his face, a big, loud, good old, "FUCK. YOU!". Screaming those two words at him would make me unbelievably happy. It's all I'm asking for. OK, maybe I'd also let him know how much of a prick he really is and what a miserable, unreasonable and bitter man he's shown himself to be.

(Since beginning my rant, I've released some of my latent rage at the gym, so I'm feeling better now.)