Every workplace has a cast of characters. At mine, there is the woman who talks incessantly about her cats. The guy who’s confused about his sexuality. Another guy who rants and raves about politics and religion, even when we’re talking about something else. Every now and then one of the temps will be a closet racist, or a truther, or a bible thumper. Most of the people are cool, though.
But there is one guy we all avoid. The hall monitor. The teacher’s pet. The goddamn apple polisher.
Sam has been with the company seemingly forever, long before I came on board. He used to work in HR, but now he’s just a drone like the rest of us. Some of my co-workers used to hang out with Sam after hours, have a few drinks, whatever. By all accounts he’s a nice, easy-going guy outside of work. It’s sort of hard to believe, because at work he drives us up the fucking wall.
It’s like he has anointed himself HR’s eyes and ears all across the cube farm. Take too long on break? There’s Sam giving you the hairy eyeball. Complain aloud about all the petty rules were subjected to? There’s Sam with the rule book in his hand, quoting exact regulations and reminding us that we all signed an employee agreement. Sometimes you even find yourself getting hauled into an HR interview because Sam has reported you for some minor infraction.
But the worst part? He gets away with it. Even if he pulls the same shit as anyone else. Mostly because of Mr. Grant, one of the big muckety mucks in HR. Last week, we were all so fed up with it that we confronted Mr. Grant. All we asked was that he treat Sam like the rest of the employees. We thought it was perfectly reasonable request, but what we got was basically,a big fuck you. Maybe it’s because they used to work together, I don’t know, but Mr. Grant shot down all our complaints about Sam. He pretty much tied himself in knots, twisting logic to give Sam a pass. Really fucking aggravating.
After that, the place was practically in mutiny. We really didn’t have any recourse but people were still finding ways to complain. Finally, one of the big brass, Ms. Bell, came down and shut the whole thing down. Told us to shut the fuck up and get back to work. We’re all still pretty pissed. I dont’ know why she intervened…Sam probably called her.
It’s fucked up. It’s a pretty good place to work but sometimes it seems like it’s run by incompetent fucktards.