Coworker, when I first started working here four years ago, I printed some envelopes for you because you are too old and have killed too many brain cells with booze to be able to use the word processing system. I answered your telephone for you because, well, I guess because I answer the phone for MY BOSS and you just happen to be in the next room, and my predecessor always answered your phone for you. Also, your position was created by the Big Boss because you guys were friends. As the years went by, you asked me to do more and more of YOUR WORK while you checked your stocks, read the paper, and played solitaire and freecell on the computer.
Every time you yelled out to me, “How do you spell ___________?” I would answer, even though you never believed me and had to recheck it yourself. Every time you yelled out, “How do you . . .” I stopped what I was doing, got out of my chair, and went to show you (again) how to do whatever simple computer operation you couldn’t figure out. When you would get a phone call, usually personal, and you had stepped into someone else’s office to sit around and yak I would stop what I was doing, get up, and walk around until I found you.
Now, in a few months I will have another person for whom I will perform administrative duties. You don’t know it yet, but this person is going to be in your office and you are going to be moved. I have been told to ease up on the work I do for you. So yesterday, after I had already done one of your projects, when you asked me to do another project, I told you I had been told not to do so much of your work. You became apoplectic and began cursing. I told you don’t get mad at me, it came from the Big Boss. You said, “Hell, you don’t do a goddamn thing for me anyway.” EXCUSE ME?!
I can’t mention them here, but let me assure you if it weren’t for me a good bit of your job wouldn’t get done, and what you did manage to get done would be sucky. This (doing your work and being at your beck and call) is in addition to me doing my regular job, half of a whole ‘nother person’s job, and some of another person’s job who decided she was “too busy” and had to give some tasks to someone else, AND I have to be the “backup” computer person to the (more alcoholic and brain dead than you) CSE who spends most of his time looking up Internet porn and every time you ask him something about the system, his answer is “I don’t know.” Well FIND OUT asshole, its your job! (That’s another story . . .)
Ya know, co-worker, it doesn’t really upset me that you’re mad at me and you’re acting like a spoiled brat; what upsets me is that comment, “You don’t do a goddamn thing for me anyway.” Are you just being incredibly stupid or is your brain that pickled that you don’t even realize what all I do for you? Where have you been the last four years? Would you like me to print every letter and document I’ve done for you and bury you in a mountain of paperwork? HOW DARE YOU?
Well, I am learning to say NO. I’m not going to be the Mikey (he’ll eat anything) of the office (she’ll do anything) anymore. It’s mostly my fault that I have been so willing to “do” for others. Now I am overloaded and stressed and now I have to deal with YOU acting all hurt and angry and saying “You don’t do a goddamn thing for me anyway.” GROW UP! You’re 60-something years old! You get paid probably twice what I do and you do about 1/100th the work. Oh, gee, if you have to write your own letters and figure out how to run the computer programs on your own, you might not have time to check your stocks or surf the Internet!
All you other “Mikey’s” out there, practice with me,** NO NO NO NO NO NO NO**. And I DON’T CARE IF YOU DON’T LIKE ME. And THIS IS MY JOB NOT MY LIFE.
Thank you for allowing me to vent.
