See, now I’m torn.
It is good for all of us and Maureen that she can have some sanity back, so I’m happy there.
BUT.
I will miss the stories. I really liked the radio one–is that young fellow still with you?
I am also left wondering, if, like feral cats, someone else in this office is just now striding to the footlights to fill the vacuum left by Joan…
I was picturing you sitting there going over your mental checklist.
-who’s got their panties in a wad over something I said now!? (check)
-you can’t fire me! (check)
-I don’t deserve this! (check)
-This place will fall apart without me (check)
-Screaming hissy fit over turning in pass (check)
-Melodramatic goodbyes to co-workers (check)
I mean, classic! Just classic! I’ll bet she’s called everybody she could think of since she left. Tell the truth, your ears are about to burn off aren’t they?
Ditto. ::sniff::
I’ve got a question. In this thread, Joan says
but at her firing she says
Was she really bad at math as well as working?
I think (though Maureen can certainly clarify) that she was refering to overall time at the company when the firing came about, and that she was refering to her time in her current position when she was asking for the luncheon.
I’m glad that this thorn is out of your side, Maureen, and respect you greatly. I couldn’t do you job, exactly because of conflicts like this.
Well, there’s these few little tidbits. There was also, back last Christmas, a little altercation between her and another coworker. It seems that she made some disparaging comments about her religion (Jehova’s Witness). I was never able to get the tech she was belittling to confirm it and then report it, though, so all I have is hearsay. The conversation supposedly went as follows:
“Why weren’t you at the Christmas luncheon this afternoon?”
“I can’t really attend or celebrate holidays like that, it’s part of my religion.”
“What religion won’t let you celebrate an office party!?”
“It isn’t the party, it’s the reason behind the party. I’m Jehova’s Witness.”
“Pfft! It isn’t as if that’s even a real religion! Honestly, you have to let go of these silly little observations.”
Now, I have a healthy dose of skepticism for most religions. Jehova’s Witnesses are on that list too. But you just don’t tell a coworker their beliefs are silly and that their faith isn’t even real. It isn’t done. This person doesn’t evangelize at work, doesn’t try to convert anyone (really. Amazing as that sounds, she’s never approached a soul at work about converting.) and is a hard worker who’s good at her job. Had this person actually verified that Joan said those things to her, her all too abundant ass would’ve been out the door that very afternoon. I got the impression, though, that she didn’t want to cause problems.
There was also the consistent never clocking out thing. Our time clock is electronic, and she had a chronic habit of not clocking out then filling in the time at the end of the time period. I ended up having to babysit and mark down her time leaving to make sure she didn’t claim more time than she actually put in.
She told a visiting client to hold their horses, Paul would be right with them but the place is such a madhouse he had all kinds of fires to put out and make sure everything was going right before he could come talk to the visiting doctor.
It was just a consistent litany of way too stupid to keep working here.
That would be correct. She got passed around from department to department before winding up in mine.
I almost forgot: Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and helping me to laugh about this for the past year or so. It really has helped take the stress off.
And this didn’t raise a warning flag with you? Was she “passed around” or did she apply for different, lateral positions in other departments?
I knew that prior to moving to A/P (her department before me) she had been a medical assistant in the unit. The reason she gave for switching departments then had been burn out, and she wanted consistent days off with shorter hours. That made sense to me. I did NOT know til she got here that she’d also been in A/R and at the front desk of corporate. So the interdepartmental switcheroo was a concern, but a minor one at the time. As I said in the boombox thread, she assured me that she’d worked out her various personal problems and was ready to make a fresh start, yada yada…and I believed her. So I probably brought this on myself in that regard.
Oh, man! Couldn’t you have twisted the knife a little harder, just for us? You knew we’d all want to hear a gruesome tale. I’m sure you could have thought of something subtle yet horrible to say to really set her off, would that have been so hard?!?!?! We wanted to see blood on the floor, dammit!
I keed, I keed. You know, reading this makes me think back to how I behaved when I was fired and makes me proud I kept my cool at the office even if I did rant like an insane woman afterward, in the privacy of the local taverns.
Tell me about it. The last time I got “laid off” it was within a couple of weeks of the Labour Relations Board overturning a successful union certification for my department, which I’d organized. (The company had several stooges from other departments blatantly lie about their job descriptions to create a false community-of-interest issue.) Of course I wasn’t being let go for organizing, though – that would be illegal. Naturally the timing of termination to coincide with my birthday wasn’t intentional… that would be spiteful. And of course having the CEO present to gloat over a routine termination was totally normal.
I smiled and agreed that the severance package was very generous, and thanked them for the offer of a ride home, but assured them I was fine to make it back on my own. (Though, to be honest, my legs had gone all wobbly.) You try to keep a little dignity, right?
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And you said it was 35 minutes? Not bad.
At first, like others, I was sad to see Joan go because of the neat threads.
Something tells me we haven’t heard the end of Joan yet.
Oh, man, that reminded me sooo much of when Jean Teasdale was fired! Does Joan have a weakness for Precious Moments figurines and romance novels?
Seriously, good on you for keeping your cool. Though people like Joan can sometimes have an oddly calming effect; they’re so out of touch with what’s really happening, there’s no way you can get sucked into their vortex of psychosis.
I wouldn’t project acceptance onto those melodramatic goodbyes.
From what we’ve heard about her personality, I’d bet dollars-to-doughnuts that Joan imagined that her goodbyes might inspire enough sympathy and indignation over the injustice of it all to create a dramatic flurry of resignations-in-solidarity or a similar mutiny that would ultimately result in a return to the status quo.
I haven’t participated in this thread but the title has been niggling at me for days:
what the heck is a hosebeast, and why is it a term of abuse?
I’ve been quietly reading along this whole few days - and now i must say
Congratulations, Maureen, for surviving this little demon. I’ve worked with people like that - even got passed over for a promotion in favor of someone like that. If there’s interest, I’ll tell the tale. But you did good, Maureen, and HOORAY it’s over now. But where will the good stories come from now?
Joan’s replacement? 
Always willing to help out, I am. Hose beast, the term is about three quarters down the page.
What do you mean if there’s interest? Of course we want to hear it. Child, have you forgotten where you are?
One of my favorites is the co-worker that refused to be fired. This happened four years ago. She went way beyond Joan’s “she can’t fire me” routine. This one meant it. This is the story of another manager at my job and someone she was firing. The firee (a true psycho hose beast. She was being fired for calling a co-worker a “stupid white bitch who’d make a better living as a crack whore”. I swear!) refused to believe she was being fired. She insisted she was going back to work because she couldn’t be fired. She was too good at her job for the organization to fire her. If she wasn’t doing her job the place would fall apart. Then she went back to her desk to begin working. Of course, her access to the system was gone, so she proceeded to put in a request for a new password. By this time a couple others and I had been called in for backup cause this was getting seriously weird. For some reason she really liked me, so she sorta listened when I said to her that she really should turn in her keys, get her personal stuff and leave. Except, she decided she could only be fired if our executive director said so. She was not there that day, thus, it hadn’t really happened. Did I mention she was queen of the psycho hose beasts? Again, her supervisor asked her nicely to turn in her keys, clean out her desk and leave. PHB turned to me and said, “Will you please tell this bitch that she cannot fire me?” Ok. Time for the big guns. I said to her if she didn’t turn in her keys, get her personal possessions and leave, then we’d have to have the police come and escort her out. She got up from her desk and began shuffling a bunch of papers and said she was going to do some filing. Meanwhile, another manager, having taken my cue, had called the police who came about five minutes later. I met the policeman in the lobby, explained the situation, and walked with him into the office where PHB was again sitting at her desk trying to gain access to the server. The policeman asked her what was going on. She said that she was trying to work but all these people were bothering her and keeping her from working. He told her that it was his understanding she had been fired and was refusing to leave. She told him that she wasn’t fired because the person who told her she was fired couldn’t fire her. The policeman looked at me and asked me if I would clarify that. I said that her supervisor had fired her, the reasons, and that she had been asked to turn in her keys and gather up her personal belongings and leave but had refused too. The policeman asked her very nicely to please do this and that he would escort her out of the building. She went nuts! Rantin’ and Ravin’ and going on about how the policeman had threatened her with violence and that she was going to call her lawyer right now and get him over here to witness the brutality. That was the last straw. The policeman looked right her and said, “Ma’am, either you can turn in your keys, gather your belongings and walk unaided out the door or I can handcuff you and take you downtown to be booked. We can do it easy or we can go the hard way, your choice.” She sat there with her mouth opened. She looked at me and said, “Please don’t let him take me to jail” and started sobbing, loud and long. Then she stopped. She stood up, handed her keys to me (while staring at her supervisor as if she were saying “Neener! Neener! Neener! You don’t get my keeeeys!”), put her personal stuff in the box she had been provided and told the policeman she was ready to go. Her last words as she was walking out the door were, “See y’all Monday when (name of Executive Director) tells me I wasn’t fired.” :dubious: That was the last I saw of her until two weeks ago, when I was in this little strip mall where I get my hair cut. I had just gotten a hair cut and was walking by this title pawn place in the strip mall when I heard my name being called. It was her! :eek: She told me she had started work in the pawn place about a month ago. This was her first job since she had been fired four years ago. She told me she met and married a man within three weeks of being fired and had been staying home but got a job because they’re getting divorced. I wonder how long before the PHB in her resurrects itself on this job. The guy that cuts my hair is a good friend, so I told him that if the title pawn place were ever suddenly surrounded by police cars, that’d mean she was being fired.
well, it’s not nearly as exciting as yours or Maureen’s, but here goes
a bunch of years ago, i applied for a position one step up within my department. The other applicants were two from my department and one from another department. Of the 3 within (me and the 2 others) I was the best candidate. The outsider gave a better interview. I met her at the company Christmas party. She seemed nice enough, so I decided to give her benefit of the doubt. At the time, our desks were these 2 person cubbies with short walls, so there was no privacy. they put HER in the other desk in my cubby.
It turns out she’d moved around quite a bit during her 2 years with the company. She’d just learn the ropes, and apply for a new position. But she got good recommendations from her former supervisors. Because they wanted to get rid of her. She didn’t learn the ropes. Our supervisor still gave me the work that was supposed to go to that position because SHE was still finding her way around.
SHE’d ask me for help, and through the resentment, I’d help. Noone liked her too much. She was out a lot, claiming residual pain from a car accident (I don’t know if that was true or not). When she was in, she took very long breaks. One day, about six months after she was hired, i heard her ask for my help in a calm voice. I turned towards her half of the desk, only she wasn’t in her seat. She was on the floor. She claimed to have fallen. But I heard no thud, no cry of surprise or pain, nothing. And the box that I knew I’d pushed against the wall (specifically to avoid such occurances) ws out a bit in the aisle. Security came in and interviewed me and a few others. No one else saw or heard anything. An insurance investagator came in an interviewed us all. Three lawyers came in individually to interview us. She sued and lost because no one could back up her story and because all the crap she’d pulled in her other departments came out. Then she quit. Or was fired for suing the company while still employed.
Thing is, the manager realized the mistake in hiring her within the first week (I later found out) but they couldnt unhire her, and that’s why I still got all that work.
see? I told you it wasn’t as interesting