Our manager has just left, leaving this woman in charge.
She is a nice person but needs to chill out.
She’ll accost you, and talk at you endlessly about things you don’t want to hear about: how her husband annoys her (every story ends with “And so we had a huge fight”), how she can’t pay her bills, how the manager managed to set everything up to screw her over after his departure, how her current superior manages to screw her over too. She intersperses this with various self-deprecating things which she then laughs off - thus saving us the choice of having to truthfully agree, or come up with a convincing (but false) denial. These have been becoming more and more frequent in the recent weeks.
I am but an admin assistant, and for the past two weeks I have done nothing other than read the Dope because she has done all my work for me. Which I don’t mind, really. I am happy to reap the benefits of her self-importance complex.
She won’t let you get a word in edgewise. She will say what she has to say, and having said it, say something else, and repeat ad infinitum.
She just lost it on me for some random, weird, silly reason which I will not get into here because it is so silly. She apologized afterwards and talked my ear off about the things listed above (excluding the husband, this time).
She doesn’t appear to have a lot of friends, as evidenced by the fact that she has told me she and her husband are kind of anti-social. Also evidenced by extent to which she takes her personal relationship with me seriously. To me she is nothing but a co-worker.
Now, I have never really considered co-workers to be friends. Possibly because I have been in school all my life (and therefore had other sources for a social life), and have also never had a full-time, permanent job. But I am very happy to remain casual - but distant - friends with my co-workers. The less we talk about our personal lives, the better. “Oh I went to a great party last night” is great. “My husband is adopted and I just found out that his birth mother doesn’t want to see him” - not so much. Clear limits, that’s for me. Co-workers are kind of a necessary evil. If we are friends, we will be friends strictly on our own time. I find things much easier that way. Office politics give me the willies.
But to her I seem to be someone who really cares about what she thinks and does and judges her for it. (Which maybe now I am - although I’m not judging her for the things she thinks I am - her taste in TV programs, her choice of weekend activities, etc - rather, the fact that I think she is ever-so-slightly mad.)
Don’t worry, she tells me, we only have three more weeks to put up with each other. Don’t worry, I would have told her (if I had had the opportunity to speak) nothing about you bothers me in the slightest. I am more than happy to sit in my cubicle and read the SDMB. I couldn’t care less about what you watch or eat or play, even less so about how much of a jerk you think your husband is. I am thrilled to have polite conversations with you while we go for coffee, and to sit in your office and listen to how overworked you are. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I rather enjoy the entertainment factor.
She herds us all together for “meetings” which consist of her telling us stuff, like stories about being mistreated by employers, and her husband, and so on.
She is slowly becoming unglued. I have repeatedly offered - asked, requested, begged - for her to let her help me ease her load (work-wise) a bit. She always declines.
So there is nothing left to do but watch …
:: pulls up deck chair, snaps open a beer ::