By J. Bird
First off – Crazy Sign Spotted Downtown Today: “God Told Satan to Go To Hell and Take Bush With Him!!”
While Bird agrees in principle, the theory is pretty quacky, since the whole God casting ol’ Lucifer Morningstar from the Heavens would, theoretically, have happened billions of years ago, and, well, Bush ain’t that old.
But enough about religion and politics. Or rather, enough about those kinds of politics.
Let’s talk about office politics.
There’s currently a battle in the suite in which I work. I’m not sure what started all the hate-mongering – it seems to have begun some time before my employment here – but it’s between individuals who work on either side of reception.
It really came to a head a few weeks ago, when this sour-puss, Codename “Petunia,” from “the other side,” got into it with a co-worker of mine. Now both of these individuals are old enough to be my mother – and Bird here is old enough to remember the latter part of the Seventies reasonably well – and at least one of them is indeed a grandmother. Nonetheless, an argument ensued and escalated, and the woman from the Dark Side, “Petunia,” ended up calling my coworker, “Pat,” an “asshole.”
These are mature women, here, folks, and I was pretty shocked. “Pat” curses like a sailor, but she wouldn’t resort to name-calling in the workplace, especially to someone’s face. Furthermore, if you are going to call someone a name, you should call them a name that makes sense. What catty woman calls another woman an asshole? The proper curse word in this context would most certainly be “Bitch,” wouldn’t it?
Well, “Petunia” has been snarky ever since, but I scarcely ever see her, so I mostly just hear the fumings of “Pat”. But then another woman from “Over There” decided to get in the ring with poor “Pat,” who really is very nice. This woman, Codename “LargeMarge,” stood up as “Pat” was walking by and, completely out of the blue, said, “You know, “Pat”, you’d just better keep your nose out of other people’s business.”
“Pat” is still trying to figure out what that was all about. There hadn’t been an incident to provoke it, so we’re all pretty puzzled. Even our allies over there are in the dark about what’s at the root, though many have their suspicions that the dreaded Office Manager, “Barb,” has something to do with it. When I went for a Coke earlier, one of the allies was in the kitchen having lunch.
“How’s it going over on you guys’ side today?” she asked.
“Pretty well. Busy, I guess. You?” I answered.
She heaved a great sigh. “You know how it is. You’re lucky over there. We’ve got “Barb” hovering around all day. It gets pretty tough.”
I consoled her as best I could and scurried back to my side, realizing that the office is just a microcosm of the world at large. And we all know how well that’s going.
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J. Bird is the Beachwood’s psuedononymous workplace affairs correspondent. See more Life at Work here.
Posted on September 5, 2006