Inspired by the backstabbing “What’s the worst thing a co-worker has done to you?” thread, it started me thinking of phsyco coworkers I’ve known. My list is short.
1 - “Pam”. Late thirties, homely person with a great phone personality that never carried over to real life. Worked as a travel agent 8 or so years in the same office and no one liked her. Being the new kid, my desk was put behind hers so I could stare at the back of her head all day while on the phone. While she talked she would pull out chunks of hair and make hairballs on her desk. How she managed to have a head of nearly waist length hair amazed me after the months I saw her do this.( I moved my desk away from her as soon as that thought hit me.) She stopped doing this after I told her that her " hair ball had fallen off the desk." ( My boss and coworker both spit out their pops when I did.)( I love being me sometimes.)
Also, she would wear a down winter jacket in JULY, citing she was cold. I bitched at her that it was 90-friggin’ degrees outside and how could she be cold without the A/C on in our office? She placed her hand on my forearm to show me how cold she was and you know what? My hands were colder. That stopped the coat wearing in July.
Another time in the winter she came in complaining that the guy who lived downstairs in the upstairs flat they were renting off of him had gone on vacation for a month and turned off the heat ( What a fucking idiot) and they were living in sleeping bags by space heaters they had to buy to keep warm. My boss was lamenting along with her and my coworker and I just rolled our eyes not wanting to get sucked in. However, having a friend who went thru this very scenario of renting the top half of a house and the downstairs landlady turned off the heat when she went to work at night ( who are these morons?), I felt obligated to share it with Pam. Finding out that Yes,they paid for heat in their rent to the landlady/tenant below, I said, " You have a legal right to your heat. Go get a brick and let yourself in through a window.( Or use a drill and drill through the lock. I gave several options, but the brick is always the fastest.) Go inside and turn on the heat then board up that window and change the fuckin’ locks on the doors downstairs leaving a note to the idiot landlady that until she refunds a partial payment of that months rent and reimburses you for the cost of the locks on the door, she ain’t gettin’ into her house.
(What kind of moron turns off the heat in a house in the winter in Michigan.The repair bill alone on frozen pipes would be in the thousands, to say the least.) This last paragraph could be another thread known as,
" Fuckwads I’ve known."
Then, towards the end of Pam’s lack luster career ( she had no sales, no clients other than phsyco’s and no friends at the office. After a decade? What the hell was she doing all day long?) she came into work one day gasping for air like a fish out of water. Our direct boss, a very sympathetic but gullible person, immediately rushed to help her.
( another coworker and I just rolled our eyes waiting to see what THIS would be) Pam said she couldn’t swallow since last night and now couldn’t breath and had an appointment for the doctor’s office at 11am ( it was 9a) Before my boss could " oh dear" her, I piped up, " Why in the hell didn’t you go to emergency. You have insurance from here and your husband works for one of the Big Three ( Ford, Chrysler,GM) and has excellent insurance. Her response was, " But I didn’t want to be late." My coworker shot back ( as heartless as I) " You haven’t been on time in 8 years, why should one more day matter?"
( She use to have the 8am -4pm shift, which was coveted because between 8-9am, the office was dead and you got out at 4p before the rush hit. (“Pam” would suddenly get really busy every day at 345p and stay until 7p, getting comp time. Her sales were the lowest in the office ( like selling one ticket a day compared to my 40-50.) but she had the highest comp time. She manipulated the time clock to show that she was arriving on time, but was actually getting there at 855a. It took my coworker and I about two months to figure out how she did it and we busted her. What happened from that was no one ever got comp time again, and ‘Pam’ was yanked from the shift, leaving the rest of us to fight over it in the usual whiney fashion.
The other phsyco’s:
" Jackie". She lost her wedding ring and couldn’t come into work for two days until she found it. Chain smoked constantly and had a voice like gravel. She was all of 42 and didn’t think smoking was bad for her. Only had one child because labor was unbearable.
" Wanda" was a 28 year old southern born girl who’d never had a job in her life. (Outside of being a Rockafeller, how does one make it to being 28 without any job experience?) It didn’t take long to realize she had the IQ of a dead gerbil and the personality of wet bread and her entire life was living on the couch watching soaps and talk shows. Her husband, (the nicest fellow who must have had to put on a blindfold and headphones to screw her because she was not attractive at all and her personality was definately lacking), talked the owners ( different job than the Pam story) into hiring her part time to help with the evening rush at the video store ( yeah, real rocket science) I worked at. She was suppose to work 4-8 pm. Since I was there from 930am to 1015pm daily, I took an hour lunch in the back while Wanda would stand out front watching movies ( No problem there). When it came time for her break ( 15 minutes) she would leave for an hour. I told her she had fifteen minutes, not an hour. She was leaving during the peak times. Wanda was like, " But yoooou get an hour." I explained that I was there all day and by law I was entitled to this, while she was entitled to that. blah blah blah" (Bear in mind, I’m 19 she’s 28.) This scenario went on for several weeks and the exact conversation kept on taking place. I had no power to fire,but legally I could strangle her at any time for stupidity, so I told my boss to cover my shift for me one day to see what I had to deal with.( he worked a full time job in the real world and only managed the money and hiring, I did everything else.) He worked with her for all of three hours and fired her. She came in the next day to work with me and I re-fired her and called her husband and left a message on their answering machine. I suppose she’s living on the couch while her husband supports her cable and twinkie habit.
I had a say from that moment on on who I work with and never got stuck with another Wanda again.
