Workaday World

I work with a woman who is particular boil on the butt cheek of my existence. It seems that there is always one of her in my direct sightline, buzzing like a mosquito when the nightlights are extinguished. Unlike other objects of my pervasive misogyny, who might be excused from the undercroft if space were limited, I would happily exhume some of the others with a spork in order to place more of her in the dirt. Yeah, I hate them that much.

Picture it:
You’re in fourth grade and lumbering through the school yard, bapping younger kids with your lunch box and belching chocolate milk. You decide that sprinting is immediately called for, and break into bolting run. You are only a few meters into in when you hear, “WALK!”

The hiss comes from her. She’s the AAA Safety Patrol. Emblazoned with a fluorescent orange sash, she wears her title with the pride of Miss USA and the intensity of an air traffic controller. A mere year your senior, she nonetheless claims all of the authority invested her by the American Automobile Association, oddly the guarantor of all things safe on the playground. You look at her, her smug self-righteousness, and your belly oozes with rancor. I wish that I could tell you, little moppet, that the bitch with the neon badge will outgrow her sanctimonious score-keeping. However, she will never be any different than she is at that very moment – and you will have to deal with her or one of her sisters for the rest of your life.

For her, there is absolutely no gray – only the most polar black and white. She lives for rules and minutia and “what ifs” and her very presence causes little pin-prick hemorrhages all over the surface of your brain. Even as I write this, I find myself wincing in a grimace of loathing for this hell spawn, my mouth spewing frothy little flicks of bile which land on my monitor. I fucking hate her.

Invariably, she is in charge of safety or supplies or payroll – anywhere there is a tally to be made and lips to be pursed. She controls the keys to the shitter, noting on a clipboard the frequent urinaters, and inventories the toilet paper at the beginning and end of each shift. She is the one who takes the initiative to dock you eleven minutes of vacation time when you are caught by a train in the morning, and casts a shadowy, squinting glance when a coworker leaves early to take their kid to an organ transplant. It doesn’t matter that none of this is any of her fucking business, she answers to some satanic authority that compels her to be such a bitch.

Any, and I do mean ANY, change is greeted with extreme suspicion and a barrage of potential consequences. Move the water cooler a foot to the left and she announces that the secondary means of egress from the work area is now potentially blocked, possibly endangering the lives of all and incurring the wrath of Jesus or Zeus or the fire marshal. No one is safe from her judgment – it doesn’t matter if it is a hapless subordinate or the CEO. Rules are rules and she is the minion who must report.

She is universally disliked by everyone in the office. There is an unwritten bit of etiquette when you see a coworker being accosted by her, drawn into her hatey vortex over some infraction. The protocol is simple: do not help them out in any way. Don’t clear your throat, don’t walk in and change the topic to American Idol, and certainly don’t assert any sort of explanation or defense on their behalf. It is the exact same behavior that you would use should you happen upon a dingo consuming a baby – just keep on walking it has nothing to do with you.

She has been a serial character in my experience – different incarnations playing the same demagogic role – forecasting the demise of life as we know it if the over-utilization of Post-It notes doesn’t cease and desist. I hate her wherever she pops up – “confirming” your extended lunch for corporate records or chronicling your work-time internet shopping as if she were catching a Dateline sex predator.

I have found that a bit of guided imagery helps me maintain my psychic stability in her presence. I often go to my “special place of healing” and imagine myself ripping her fucking arms off and bludgeoning her to death with the blood-spurting stumps. It calms me, really.