Sometimes being positive can get you killed

I'm all for positivity in the workplace, most of what I put in this blog are jokes (grounded in reality) but I usually wouldn't act remotely like "Mr Angry" to anybody in real life, particularly at work. But every now and then someone gets just a bit too goddam cheerful at precisely the wrong fucking time to precisely the wrong fucking person.

This morning one of my cow-orkers crossed an important cheerfulness tolerance threshold. The wrong fucking time was 8.55 - 5 minutes before an important presentation when a major system meltdown occurred which, shall we say, slightly derailed my plans. The wrong fucking person was me. Basically, the situation was pretty shitty but salvageable. I was going to lose face but the people I work with are pretty reasonable, they know unpredictable disasters happen occasionally. So I was stressed but not totally losing my shit. Then the inappropriately cheerful cow-orker piped up:

Cheeful Cow-orker: Cheer up, it could be worse.

Me: (deep breath, search for inner calm so I don't punch CC) How exactly?

CC: At least you have your health.

Me: How do you know that?

CC: What?

Me: How do you know I have my health? You don't know anything about me. For all you know, I have cancer.

CC: Oh my god, you don't, do you?

Me: No, but you don't know that. Stop saying fatuous things or one day you'll end up saying it to someone who's just been diagnosed with some horrible disease.

CC: That's a terrible thing to say. I was only trying to be positive.

Me: Well don't, there's nothing positive about this situation.

CC: There's always something positive, you just have to keep looking.

Me: Yeah, like maybe I do have cancer.

CC: What?

Me: A really fast acting cancer that's going to kill me in the next five minutes so I don't have to deal with this shit.

CC: You shouldn't say things like that.

Me: Or a massive brain haemorrhage. I could really do with a catastrophic subdural hematoma right now.

CC: I... uh...

Me: You do realise that the only reason you're still alive is that this projector is too fucking heavy to throw at your head, right?

CC: (looking considerably less cheerful now) Whuh?

Me: How many seconds do you think it would take you to get out of my sight? Because I reckon I can find something to stab you in the brain with inside of 7 seconds from now.

And then the only sound I had to put up with was the sound of scampering feet as the inappropriately cheerful cow-orker fled in terror. It turns out he only needed 3 seconds to escape. Which was quite lucky because I found a sharp bit of metal in 5 seconds.