Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Psycho

I’ve worked for, with, by, and near some pretty screwy people in my life. One such bundle of joy was a woman I lovingly referred to as the Mighty Queen of the Psycho Babes. I also coined a term to describe her with that is very, very, very not nice. It is a perfectly apt word that is a derivation of a very bad four-letter word most women despise. She was such a wacko I had to make a horrible word even worse. My new word is an adverb, but I also use it as a gerund. It has slipped into my lexicon, and into the lexicon of my close associates. I'm sure other people have also happened upon the same word from dealing with similar people in their lives. I wonder if I can get Webster interested in declaring it an official new word.

I am utterly convinced this woman must have photographic evidence of the owners of the company molesting sheep, as I cannot imagine how she got to be the Office Manager. My sweet innocent little darlings the depths and insidiousness of this woman’s insanity were unfathomable. When I went to interview for my job, I met with the person who would be my boss, then with the Psycho Babe, then with the Managing Vice President. My boss told me all about what would be expected of me, asked me all kinds of great stress questions, and really found out a lot about my abilities and shared a lot of realistic information about the drudgery and annoyances of the job. The VP was cool, also asked tons of questions, and gave me a lot of information about the company. Psycho Babe talked about her relationship, her excellent meatloaf, and her need to go to the dentist. No, actually she was not high, just the most fascinatingly self-absorbed over age skank I have ever met in my life.

Not only did I, and all the other brilliant, competent, and passionate people I worked with, have the joy of enduring the Mighty Queen of the Psycho Babes, but also her Idiot Spawn, all three of them. Ah, such joy. The only consolation is that they all smoked, and consequently they were all frequently gone from the office for several minutes at a time, sometimes blessedly all at once. We all lived for the times when they would take family vacations and all be gone for whole days. Ah, it was like Martin Luther King’s dream had come true, and we were free at last. Free from tyranny and oppression. Free from the vast vacuum if inane, petty foolishness.

When I resigned to take a job in my field she informed me that it was inconvenient for her for me to give only two weeks notice. She needed more notice to hire a replacement whipping boy since she had important vacation and shopping plans, as well as a great desire not to do any actual work. I said no that was not possible as my plans were based on the customary two-week resignation notice. My plans were to take some time to recover from the psychological warfare and move into a new job with an open heart.

Some of my favorite things this woman did are;

Flying across the office to screech at me to answer the phone when no one else had answered the phone either, answering the phone was not my primary responsibility, nor was it a responsibility for which I was a primary point person. Further, because of tasks that were my sole and primary responsibility, the reason I did not answer the phone was because I was already on it with clients, vendors, or coworkers, and hence not free to answer the phone what with only having one mouth, two hands, and only one hold line.

Requiring me, and only me, to fill out detailed time off requests if I would be coming in late, having to leave early, or take a long lunch. Everyone else in the office understood that there were frequent and unforeseeable instances of these events. I was not only working full time, but also going to school full time with the blessing of my immediate supervisor as well as the Managing Vice President. I was further dealing with parents who were frequently in a state of needing emergency medical attention. I was unable to fill out a request as my parents did not black out, or have cardiac issues, fall, react badly to chemotherapy, fail to urinate for days, or fail to stop defecating for days on a schedule.

I was required at her insistence to have a designated lunchtime. No one else had this requirement.

Our office was rather small probably one thousand square feet. All on one level with cubicles. It was very easy for us all to see, or find each other. One day I went to lunch, for a lunch hour, and punched out on the time card as always. Anybody who might wonder where the hell I was could check my time to see if I punched out and how long I had been gone. So, I am sitting in our lunch room, about fortyfive minutes into my lunch hour, where anyone can clearly see me if they were to just look in the door, or happen to walk by. My cell phone begins to ring, and I see it is my office on the caller ID. Strange since I am sitting right the fuck there. Once my phone rings everyone hears it and I hear a chorus of people screaming "she's in the kitchen!" As if I had been hiding. No one was calling my name. No one had ducked into the kitchen looking for me. She insisted I must come back immediately to perform a menial duty that is actually the responsibility of one of the Idiot Spawn, who had failed to perform it of late. It is something ANYONE could have done. It is not my job, and many times in the past Psycho Babe had forbidden me to do it. That day I need to be hunted down on my lunch hour to do it.

I was forbidden to get office supplies. I was not allowed to have simple things, like pens, and a functioning adding machine, without having to go to the Managing Vice President for written approval to ignore the Psycho Babe’s refusal.

When my parents died, she complained to anyone who would listen about how I had no right to take two weeks off and how awful it was that she had to field some of my phone calls, and answer questions from vendors and clients. The fact that during those two weeks both my parents died, and I had planned and somehow managed to survive their funerals apparently was not a mitigating factor. I explained to her that I understood how she felt, as my parents’ deaths had been quite disruptive and inconvenient for me as well.

Fucking cuntly bitch.

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