I walked up to the office door and aggressively grabbed the cold handle. The thud of resistance was a surprise to me being that I knew my co- workers were already there. Our office doesn't open until 8:30am, but those happy idiots were always there by 8:00am. I also knew that they were probably all huddled in the far back of the office drinking coffee and telling tales of their uneventful evenings. I grumbled as I viced my notebook under my chin, tucked my water bottle into the bend of my arm, and unzipped my purse. That keycard has to be in there somewhere. I swiped the card and the door to Hell...I mean, work opened. As I came into the office, all three of my co-workers appeared, coffee cups in hand. I rolled my eyes and sat down at my desk ready to start the long painful day here at Any Office USA.
Maybe I should introduce myself. My name is Sassy. Sassy McGhee. I've been working at Any Office USA (or AO USA, as we call it) for about 2 years now. It has been the longest, most torturous 2 years in my working life. We don't do exciting work here. Actually, we do pretty useless work here. But, don't most offices? We are a paper pushing company. No! Literally we push papers/ forms all day. We get forms in the mail. We separate and sort the forms. We photocopy the forms. We staple the forms. We file the forms. We unfile the forms. We shred the forms. What forms are they? Who knows. I don't think any of us have even looked at the forms. We're too busy shuffling the forms on our desks so we look like we are busy. But, the forms are not what make the office remotely interesting. It is my co-workers.
When I first interviewed at AO USA, I was so excited. The job description seemed right up my alley. I would be working for an "official" business with high security information. I would need to be trusted to not divulge confidential information. I would build a repoire with customers and provide a service that they desperately needed. Well...I don't know where that job went to, but I sure don't do it. I push papers all day. I have to stretch 1 hour's worth of work out to 8 hours. It can be a challenge sometimes. There are but so many bathroom breaks one can take in a workday. Maybe I just haven't mastered the art of wasting time. My co-workers sure have.
Directly across the room from me sits my co-worker Oldie Gilly. Oldie is 61 years old and just going through the motions until she can retire. Now, she is one to go to the bathroom A LOT during the day. I can only imagine her standing in there staring at the "no smoking" sign or perhaps doing toe touches while sitting on the toilet. She pees more than a baby. It pisses me off because she conveniently has to pee whenever the phone rings or there is some problem with the paper. It is funny to watch her get up from her desk to make the 20 second walk to the bathroom. She has to gear herself up and get her body prepared for every movement. When she finally does stand up, body parts start crackling like it's the 4th of July. One day her knee popped so loudly that I hit the deck for fear of being hit by a bullet from whatever attack we were under. She also has this weird shaped figure. She's thin everywhere except her stomach. She looks like a mother kangaroo carrying around her joey. This state is accentuated by her khaki skirts which she pulls up to her bust line. There's just boobs and gut, no torso really. Her round glasses always sit perched on the tip of her nose threatening to flee at any moment. Oldie isn't as much annoying as she is just plain old boring.
Our boss, Cherry Odom, is a real work of art. Cherry is still living in her heydays of the 80s. I can only imagine what she was like as a young woman in the 80s. At 43 years old, she still talks like a Valley Girl. When "Oh, my God!" comes out of her mouth, I feel like I'm being gagged with a spoon until I barf. Her hairdo is straight out of a John Parr video. It's a mullet with a hybrid of grey, blond, and brown. Rumor has it that she got pregnant when she was 16 years old and gave the kid up for adoption. She was adopted herself. I think being adopted is the root of her extreme Type A personality. She is very competitive, really aggressive and constantly worried about whom she knows and what she's done. My philosophy is that she is this way because she wants to feel better about the fact that she was abandoned by her birth parents. She is constantly trying to prove something to herself and everyone around her. If you have done something, she says that she's done it better. It's a wonder her husband, Baldo, hasn't run off to the desert to live with the coyotes. He would, at least, be a man around them.
The other co-worker is Cherry's best friend, Smarty Handy. She is also aggitating. She is just an extension of Cherry. Her reason for being a Type A is similar. She, too, feels that she is not good enough and is stuck in the 80s. She barely finished high school before marrying the first man who kissed her. She was divorced with one child by the age of 19. Four more children, each with a different father, would follow for the next few years. She got ahead back in her 20s by flinging her long bleached blond hair whenever a man was involved. She soon landed a good job and could pretend to have more education than she actually did. Her days were now filled with obeying the whims of her friend, Cherry, who was providing her income as her employer. She spent much of the day throwing around "big" words so others wouldn't question her validity in the organization. She too felt that she needed to do something right in her life. She had managed to raise five children who were now all adults living under her roof. She longed for the life of an educated, successful socialite.
The powers-that-be seemed to not notice or care that there were four people pushing the forms all day, when the job could have been done in half a day by one person. Cherry made sure that Smarty was looked after first. Everyone else were just pawns in the game to accomplish the paper pushing. Cherry was in control. Or, was she?
