Oppugn.us

I found out there's a lot of dog and human shit on the ground in San Francisco. It's everywhere. Hobos pee or crap pretty much wherever they want. Although, sometimes the gigantic turds I see are actually from a dog, there's so much of it you just assume a human did his BM right in the center of the sidewalk and avoid it.

It's a common theme around SF. You'll dodge a monstrous brown baby on the ground and think, "How the hell did some homeless dude pound out a steamer right in the middle of the sidewalk before I even got up for work?" It's amazing the amount of literal crap you have to watch out for in San Francisco. But, it's also fairly believable considering the high number of meth-head freaks walking around at any hour of the day and night.

It's pretty nasty, but it stays on the ground and maybe the bottom of my shoes. I take my shoes off when I go in my house, so everything's alright by me. Dodge some turds, make sure I don't walk around on my carpet with my shoes, and I'm safe.

That is, until I go to work and have to tolerate dudes putting their feet on every piece of furniture in the office. I'm not kidding either. It's like some of these guys just had hip surgery and need to keep everything below their belly button elevated or they'll have a prolapsed anus.

We have a meeting. Five guys put their shit covered feet up. They're hacking at their desk. Feet up. They're interviewing someone, feet up. They're drinking coffee. Feet propped up, like they're in Bangkok smoking a cigar and getting massaged by pretty lady boys.

I even saw a few people come in for interviews for a job, and in the middle of the damn interview put their nasty fucking feet up on a table. Really? That's how you say you're a responsible person. By defiling the furniture with who-the-hell-knows-what? Nice.

It's also not like it's an accidental thing. You have to really try to get your feet onto something. You have to sit in a chair and say to yourself, "Self! I think I need to really relax. Let's get those tired dogs up on that coffee table and rock this chair back! Ah that's the stuff." This kind of rudeness takes effort. Planning.

But, it's not just me. I've had many many people tell a story almost exactly like this (which did not happen where I work, I was told this):

"The other day we had this meeting with some investors who were interested in our company. Everyone comes into the meeting room to talk with them, and we're all waiting for the CEO. He comes in, smiles at the investors and us, sits in his chair, and then promptly puts his feet on the table pointing them right at the main investor. This investor also happens to be Indian and Buddhist so this immediately pisses him off. CEO guy totally ignores the grimace he's been given for his offensive gesture and keeps on blabbing like everything's alright...with his feet on the damn table. Pointed right at the investor. In his face."

"We didn't get funded."

This same story is told over and over around the valley. I hear it about CEO, CTOs, investors, engineers, pretty much anyone working at a tech company has told me some variation of the above.

Over and over again I'll have a friend who has manners like myself say that, yet again, some disgusting engineer at their office constantly props his feet up on every available surface. This engineer also of course wears flip-flops (or those weird webbed feet booties) so that we all get to see his awesome pedicure.

I figured out that this is a very common trope in the valley startup culture. It's a sign of passive aggressive dominance. It says, "Yeah man, I'm a cool tech hippie like you, but I get to put my feet on this here table and point their shit stains right at your face. Ahhhhhh. I'm the man now dog."

Here's the deal, there are many cultures that consider pointing your feet at them incredibly offensive. It's kind of like if I went over to your desk, grabbed you by your greasy hair, yanked your neckbeard to my backside, and farted straight in your face while yelling, "I had Kung Pao chicken for lunch! HAHAHAAH!". Yes, that's what putting your feet up on shit is like to other people.

I mean, putting aside the culturally insensitive elements of the Feet Brandishing Startup Badass maneuver, it's also just unsanitary. I was in the military, and the thing they taught you is that if you don't keep communal areas clean people get sick. They get weird diseases like meningitis and constantly have colds that get passed around. This is why the military spends more time on just cleaning a barracks than probably anything else. If they don't, people get sick and once someone gets sick that travels through the whole unit.

It's the same in an office. Leaving food around, putting your shit and piss coated feet on surfaces, pissing on the bathroom floors, and leaving dirty dishes in the sink, all lead to everyone getting sick and staying sick.

Of course, none of that reasoning is going to change the behavior because it really is a dominance gesture. Sure, it's incredibly bad manners, but that's also kind of the point. Someone putting their feet up in your face shows dominance but it is also easily ignored by most Americans since it's not universally offensive. You don't know if this dude is really being rude on purpose or if he was just raised by morons who never told him it's rude.

Putting your feet up in someone's face is a way of saying you're in charge, but you're totally laid back man.