How to Be a Complete Jerk

Some people are rocks in the stream of life; they exist merely to get noticed and create turbulence all around. Ever felt like making the world wake up to your meager existence by being the grit in its eye? Here’s how to go about it. (It's either this, or multiple back-to-back reruns of that Steve Martin movie.) (Or consulting rickzworld again.)

The first thing you will need is chutzpah, in spades.

There are many ways to rise to the title of Complete Jerk, but one of the best these days is to be a smoker puffing away just outside the entrance of some heavily-trafficked restaurant, bank, post office, dry cleaners, etc. Score bonus points by pointedly exhaling directly at any exiting patrons. Then, for good measure, flick your butt contemptuously in plain sight, leaving it to someone else to clean up your mess.

For title of Complete Mobile Jerk, you can’t beat leaning out your open SUV door and depositing a heaping mound of burned-out butts and ash, chewing gum and cellophane scraps out in the middle of a mostly-vacant parking lot. Now, that’s the way to leave your mark in this world!

Striving for Complete Jerk, Business Class? Walk around any populated public place with some silly Bluetooth beetle clinging to your ear, shouting at stadium volume about how inventory won’t be done for two or three days yet, so how can you be expected to transmit next month’s budget pro forma? Like we care about your idiotic little cubicle crisis!

For all you after-work Jerks, perfect the art of screaming at the volunteer coach of your six-year-old’s tee-ball scrimmage about the infield fly rule, and what it takes to win. (That’s it! I tell you, Lou Piniella couldn’t have done it better!)

Jerk on the Town?: When at last you’ve got your little hot flask of saké to keep you warm, and your tableside chef shows up to prepare your Hibachi Combo, tell him, “brown rice instead of white, no salt, no oil, easy on the scallions, lots of soy sauce, don’t let the shellfish and vegetables touch, and egg white only”. And then say loudly, “This green tea is fair-trade, right?"

Then it’s back behind the wheel of your freshly detailed color-coordinated gas hog with some snotty-locale decal on the back window. Head down the road with Bluetooth blazing, diet frappuccino in one hand, USA Today in the other, radio roaring out Pablo Cruise, to change lanes without signaling, then tailgating granny in her Plymouth Reliant. When she doesn’t get the hint of you flashing your brights at her and laying on the horn, zip around her, and flip her the finger of your coffee-cup hand. That’ll teach the old bat a lesson, all right!

Cap off your day with the Complete Jerk Trifecta: 1) stop at your nearest C-store for ride-home munchies, acting all the while like you’re far too sophisticated to ever get caught in a dump like this; 2) complain to the four walls that any idiot knows they should have more than one register open to handle the evening rush; 3) pay for your $1.69 purchase with a personal check, requiring you to spend eternity fishing your ID out of that stupid fake-Gucci pleatherette thing you consider a wallet. Boy, the rest of the regular folks in there are going to love you.