“Not much,” I’m told. But ultimately, not only did she did not suffer the horrible, bowel-encrusting, tooth-melting torture I feel she deserved, she made a profit - however meager - for her fucking insanity.
For those of you who weren’t around a couple of years ago, here’s the nutshell (itemized for your convenience):
a) Butt-crazy coworker pulls a disappearing act on our little office of five, and for days we’re freaked out, calling hospitals and talking to cops, wondering what happened to her.
b) Turned out that she’d gone off and gotten married to some trucker, and was with him on the occasion of her disappearance, and on several other occasions when she told us that she was either undergoing medical treatment or attending an out-of-town work-related event.
c) Coworker is subsequently terminated.
d) Coworker files some sort of discrimination claim with the state, claiming that she put up with years of mistreatment by my boss, due to race and color (the “color” part is important, because part of her claim is that even though she was not the only black person in the office, the other black person (Yours Truly) was light-skinned, and therefore treated fairly whereas she was not). This is complete and utter pungent, runny, fly-specked, corn-flecked BULL-FUCKING-SHIT.
e) I am called by an investigator from the state. I give him an earful (he did not know, for example, about her disappearance; she’d told him a completely different story), and later on learn that the claim has been dropped.
f) A year or so passes, and then I find out that she has (literally) made a federal case out of the whole thing now, and that there will be a jury trial. I am called to be a witness for the defense. The trial is set for June of 2006.
g) A few days before the trial is to begin, it gets punted back to September 2006.
h) A few days before the September trial is to begin, it gets punted back to November 2006.
i) A few days before the November trial is to begin, the Plaintiff’s attorneys file a motion to punt it back to January, 2007. I am informed that, barring a settlement, the trial will absolutely, positively, totally fer shure begin on January 29, 2007. I start panicking and planning my outfit.
j) Today I learn that Crazy Ex-Coworker has dropped the suit. That would be a good thing, except
k) In order to eliminate the risk of this shit happening again, the insurance company for my former employer is willing to pay her off a little. So she still gets money out of it. Also,
l) I learn from my former boss (who was privy to info on the depositions given by the witnesses for the Plaintiff) that she had a couple of friends willing to purjure the hell out of themselves on her behalf. Of course, at least one of these friends would have ended up having her ass handed to her by the Defense attorney over her lies, and wouldn’t that have been fun?
m) And, on an unrelated note, my former boss also told me that at one point when we were both working there, she came screaming to my boss and telling him that she’d seen her trucker boyfriend’s big rig parked at my house the night before, and demanded that he FIRE ME. When he refused (on the grounds that he didn’t believe her and that even if he did, what business is it of his if I want to boink her trucker?), she stopped speaking to him for a couple of days. NUUUUUUUT BALL!
n) And finally, does all of this mean that I really should be shoving the quilt she made and gave me for my birthday six years ago into the fireplace? Because I actually really like it.
)
