It’s ridiculous to me the layers of drama that can build up between people in such a small office place. My “day program”, as we of Davin’s Den have come to refer to our day jobs, is constantly broiling with interoffice intrigue and drama. I think this should be the set of a reality show.
Louise is a know-it-all, who has less than enough work to do, so she tends to march around and tell everyone how they should be doing things. She also races through the little amount of work that she does have, and tends to make dumb mistakes, because of the rushing. You would think that someone with so little to do would spread it out over the course of the day, in order to look busy, but this one just whips through things, disregarding if the addresses are showing through the window of the envelope, the word “public” is not misspelled as “pubic” on our website, and that minutes of meetings don’t have obvious mistakes in them.
My department used to have a ton of work that we couldn’t get to, until by the grace of some deity, we were given a part-timer to help with the heaping mounds of garbage we need to get done in a typical week. The Upper-ups decided that Louise should help with a couple of minor clerical tasks in order to lighten our load and to somehow validate keeping her on as full-time. Why someone with nothing to do all day would have a bug up their butt about being given a slight task to do is beyond me, but she was so resentful, that when I handed her the pile, I would get a “Humph”and a stank face, she would rush through the work and make multiple, stupid mistakes, and I would get a ton of work to do to correct the mistakes after the fact. And when I said thank you when the work was handed back to me, I got the same “Humph” and sour puss. Lovely.
If I pointed out the mistakes to the Uppity-ups, she was never corrected by her superior, because it wasn’t a problem with “her” work. And when I mentioned to my superior that this was causing me more work, I wasn’t allowed to take the task away from her. Outside of the actual handing of tasks back and forth, a cool breeze blew between us, emanating from Louise, every time we had the slightest interaction in the office, because of this redistribution of a very small amount of work.
Bigger questions loomed while this ice age was in place. Do I have to invite Louise to the party that all of the other employees are coming to? Yes. Will she come? Perhaps, begrudgingly. Will I have to endure whispered conversation about me at my own party? Most likely, but there was no way to single her out for not being invited, or I would have declared open war.
What do I do if I get Louise in the holiday grab bag? Do I have to devote time to choosing her gift? If I chose something she deems NOT thoughtful enough, won’t I received even more passive-aggressive mistakes in the next pile of work?
Now that we have a part-timer in my department who has taken over those tasks, oh, we are besties. Louise comes over to chat with me and tell me about person milestones and such, while deliberately frosting out my co-worker Donna, who is now on her shit list. But I don’t have time to tell you that story now, too, because you need to Netflix a couple of seasons of this drama to catch up to that point.