I can’t stand my carpool partner. I’ve come to loathe her over the months. Unfortunately, I’m trapped with her. I can’t drive anymore, no one else who works in my building lives in my area, I don’t want to make my mother or husband rearrange their schedules and drive out of their ways to accomodate me, the bus line doesn’t come out to my area, and I can’t afford a taxi. So I swallow my rage and ride with her.
But she’s unreliable. She takes a lot of sick days, so I do have to call my mom at the last minute and beg her to give me a ride, or ask my husband if he can go into work an hour late and give me a ride. That wouldn’t even be so bad if she wasn’t just so full of herself. When discussing a co-worker who has to take several weeks off to have a hysterectomy because of endemitriosis <sp?> and cervical cancer, my carpool partner poo-pooed her saying, “I’ve had that and fibroid tumors for years and just put up with it. But some people just aren’t that strong.” She has cervical cancer too, you dolt! That’s not the same thing as “fibroid tumors”! She’s already had the freezing thing done 3 times and it keeps coming back, she has to have this done! Jeez, you were a minister’s wife and you can’t muster any more sympathy than that for your fellow human being?? Plus, you have to call in sick for every little sniffle that comes down the pike. You’re as strong as an overcooked piece of spaghetti.
AND yesterday she called me about 10 minutes before she was supposed to pick me up and said she’d just got out of bed!! I let her drive my new car, I let her take it out to run errands on the lunch hour, I let her cheat me out of her fair share of gas money, and she can’t repay me any better than this? She’s just so damn unreliable, that’s her new nickname so far as I’m concerned. She’s the opposite of “Old Faithful,” she’s “Old Unreliable.”
And then there’s the job rotation thing. I won’t get into the stupid details, but she was sent to another department to be an Administrative Law Judge’s secretary for 6 months. The first month, she told everyone in my dept. how terrible the other secretaries are, how they wouldn’t help train her and they hid their old work on her desk to make it look like she was behind. But when we’re in the car alone together, she tells me she likes the atmosphere so much better in that dept. and if that position comes open to be filled permanently, she’s going to go for it. So who is she trying to impress with these stories? How does she really want us to feel? I hope she DOES get that position and I will only have to deal with her during the commute and forget about her the rest of the day. I’m glad she hasn’t been in my department the last two months and hope she never comes back.
And she’s such a snob. She regals me with stories of growing up rich and priviledged on the East Coast, how the East Coast people are so much classier and friendlier and more honest than us low brow Oregonians, how she had mob protection on the East Coast. I think she’s schizophrenic. Yeah, I grew up the daughter of poor farm folk, yeah, I have never traveled outside this country, yeah, I wear plaid and denim to the office every day. I’m a hick, thanks for reminding me at every opportunity. If the East Coast is so grand, if that’s where all your real friends are, then why don’t you go back? All you have out here are ex-husbands and hard feelings, go back! Yeah, they probably don’t want you over there, either.
But it isn’t just the stories, it’s the cutting remarks she makes about people. Last week was the neighborhood watch national night out. My little hick town wasn’t participating, but another co-worker who lives in Salem invited us to join her family’s neighborhood party. It was fun; my co-worker was one of the coordinators of her neighborhood’s shindig and she made she we got good prizes, first crack at the food, and fun stuff like that. Plus there was music and stuff, and I felt good that my co-worker thought of us and wanted to share with us. She’s not just a co-worker, she’s a friend. But I mentioned it to the carpool partner later that week and her first reaction was shock that she’d never heard of this. How could something fun go on without her knowing? But then she poo-pooed it, “Well, they need something like that for the poor neighborhoods. The poor kids who can’t afford swim club need something fun. They certainly didn’t do that in Debra’s neighborhood!” (Debra is the staff attorney she mooched off of for 10 weeks last year when she was homeless, but that’s a whole nother story!) I think she’s just jealous that no one invited her to their neighborhood party, but she has to put down my co-worker, her children, their neighbors, and anyone else who had fun doing something so low-brow and uncouth. She made a similar cutting remark about the company picnic last weekend, which she was aware of but chose not to attend. Poo-poo, poo-poo, she’s so full of poo-poo that she squeaks going into a turn.
Oh I could rant like this all day, but what’s the use? As undependable as she is, I still have to depend on her. I do have hopes that a vanpool will be started (we received an e-mail that one was under consideration for our area), but she poo-pooed that, too. Because then she couldn’t use my car on the lunch hour. Bitch.
I’m always afraid I’m overreacting or being too sensitive to this woman’s callousness and stupidity.