This morning was not like a usual morning at work. Things were quiet. AND, I was the only person there. It was 8:15am and I decided to get my morning fix of Michael Jackson videos on Youtube before the calm would be disturbed. I was right in the middle of Stranger in Moscow when the front door flung open. Oldie, Cherry, and Smarty were all aggressively chattering when they entered the door. Something was up. I have to say, I really don't care much (really at all) about the issues at AO USA. It's a job. We should be coming to work, doing the job, and going back home. Nothing more. Nothing less. But, these freaks were always keeping some drama going. It was ridiculous. Everyday there was some drama. It was just a matter of figuring out what time of day it was going to be. Morning drama was like a shot of espresso to Cherry and Smarty. Oldie just goes along with whatever they do because she wants to be with the "in crowd" at work. The behavior of adult women can be ironic. I have spent my entire life trying to find out who Sassy is. I don't think I'm any closer to the answer, but at least I can say that I'm not what I used to be. Each day I try to grow. The girls at the office, however, seem to be stuck in some eternal high school state. Cherry is the leader. You know the one girl that had just enough charisma to get her by and allow her to lead the less fortunate. Smarty is hanging onto the popular girl. She is the follower that so desperately wants to be the leader. She would easily stab her friend in the back to get that position. Oldie is the ugly duckling that just wants to fit in. She follows behind Cherry and Smarty. They just ignore her and make her do the things that they do not want to do. Oldie accepts these tasks as an honor because it is all she will get from Cherry and Smarty. I am the outlier. I don't believe in structure. I hate stupid stuff. Like today's drama.
Today's drama wouldn't have started until about 8:30 or so had it not been for technology. You see before the Cherry decided that she, Smarty, and Oldie all needed Blackberries, they were confined to drama via email between the hours of 8:30am and 5pm. But, armed with Blackberries, they can receive work emails every hour of the day. All employees of the company are on a company mailing list and primarily get the same emails. While most of us are sitting at home eating dinner with our families, Cherry, Oldie, and Smarty were anxiously staring at their Blackberries waiting for something to happen. It really is pretty sad. What important emails could come in about pushing paper? They make the slightest fuss over tiny emails. One day last week they wrote each other back and forth for 3 hours about an email they received. The email stated that they could reduce their student loan interest rates by 25% if they went with this particular company. Most of us would see this as spam and simply delete them. But, not those three. They wrote about whether it was legit or not, what the current interest rates were, whether they should delete the emails, or whether they should contact someone about them. I thought this conversation was particularly interesting being that out of the three of them, two had paid off their college loans years ago, one of them never even finished high school, and none of them currently had kids in college. Now, you may wonder how I know what was written amongst them. I know all of this because they then proceeded to discuss it all over again the next day. All of this to say that because of technology the drama that we would see today ACTUALLY started the night before.
When I came to work, I noticed an email from one of the other offices of AO USA. The email stated that Cherry had been tardy in sending one of the weekly reports to another office and to please not do it again. In the email, the sender made a snide remark referring to this "happening all of the time". Had this been sent to only Cherry, there would have only been a slight problem. But, being that it was emailed out to the entire AO USA corporate and regional list, Cherry would surely be upset. I just laughed off the email because I knew that this was in reference to this past week's stack of reports. Our office fax machine had gone on the blink. It took all day, and a new fax machine which got installed at 4:45pm, to finally get our reports out. Other than that one time, no one in the office had ever delayed in faxing or mailing out the reports. Sure enough, when the three of them got into the office this morning, they were discussing "Email Gate", as I like to call it. The email had been sent at 7:52pm last evening. Most likely they had been contacting each other about it since 7:54pm. This also means that the person who sent it was consumed with the job at that time of night too. Losers. Cherry was red faced when she sat down at her desk. Oldie and Smarty were consoling her as if she had lost a loved one. They had been debating the best response to that email. It was now 8:35am and the three of them didn't have the brain power to concoct a response to an email? Again, losers. Smarty pulled a chair up beside Cherry and her computer keyboard and put her hand on Cherry's. Oldie left Cherry's office and creaked over to her desk. As she slowly squatted into her seat, her knees grinded and finally fired off their first morning shot. She let out a sigh. closed her eyes, and tilted her head back after she turned on her computer. She was sleep deprived and had huge bags under her eyes. I smirked as I interrupted her sleep by questioning her if she had not slept well the night before. I knew the answer, but just wanted to enjoy her response. She told me that Cherry had a bad night and she stayed up to support her. I suppressed my laughter by going into a pretend coughing fit. I patted my chest and said "dust". I could just see Oldie trying sneak in a gem of wisdom in on her Blackberry as Smarty rambled on in words that were way too lofty for use on Cherry.
Smarty put her arm around Cherry and told her to be strong. She could create a professional yet strong email. Suddenly, Smarty popped up and grabbed the thesaurus from her desk. She told Cherry that she would write a draft of the email for Cherry to review before sending. This was a very common occurrence. Smarty always felt that she could better represent the office. I snickered to myself because I knew she had probably been dying to do this all night anyway. I had observed that Smarty liked to see Cherry suffer. In the beginning of a "crisis", Cherry could probably take care of herself. But, by the time Smarty stretched out the misery, Cherry would be so mentally weak that Smarty would have to take over. Smarty knew this would always make her seem like the savior. I saw it as ammunition that she could use later to dethrone Cherry from her position. Friendships rarely last.
After only 10 minutes, the "ding" on Cherry's email notifications sounded off. Smarty reemerged into Cherry's office and asked how she liked the draft of the email. It was obvious that Smarty had formulated her response during the night and this whole act was just a formality. Suddenly there was a loud crack across the room in Oldie's direction. At first I thought a bird had met his match with the large window in our office. But, when I swiveled my chair around, I just saw Oldie with her hands firmly and flatly planted on the top of her desk. She was gearing up to walk and her knees were just making the announcement. Like a drunk, she hobbled and staggered across the room and into Cherry's office. She had not been made privy to the email Smarty had written and she wanted to get in on the action. Oldie peeped over Cherry's shoulder and read the email. She gave suggestions that were immediately shot down. Cherry copied Smarty's email into another email and sent it to all that had received the first email. I checked my email and saw the overly inflated email Smarty had written. If nothing else, this job gave me plenty of laughs. Smarty had turned verbosity into a science. The essence of the email was that Cherry was late because of the fax, that she has never been late with the reports until that day, that the guy that sent the email was unprofessional, and that corporate should take action. I just sat with my mouth open at how this juvenile little email jab at Cherry was now becoming an electronic World War. This was ridiculous.
Then there was silence. Oldie, Smarty, and Cherry all waited. By now the emails were popping into our fellow co-workers inboxes. They would be reading it right about now. Some would be laughing as I was. Some would even call to speak to me and we would make fun of them "in code" language. Then there would be the "supporters". These were the people who just had to get involved in everyone else's drama because they didn't have any of their own drama going on in their offices. They were the first to call or email and get into someone else's business. Within 4 minutes the telephone rang. Cherry answered it. She started yelling "I know" over and over. Obviously, someone agreed that the original email sender was a jerk and being mean to Cherry. After all, she is doing the best job she can do. Then she yelled, "Oh my God!! What a jerk!" The original sender had responded BACK to the email. In it he didn't defend his email accusation, but simply mentioned that the email was a private email between him and Cherry. A pow-wow among Oldie, Cherry, and Smarty ensued. I pulled up the original email and saw that he had indeed sent it out to everyone on the email list. Not only had sent the email directly to Cherry's email address, but deliberately carbon copied us all in on it. There was no mistaking that he maliciously sent the email to everyone. Smarty immediately replied to this email saying that it was sent to everyone. I laughed as this email game was starting to get down, dirty, and childish. Ten more calls came in. Oldie and Smarty fielded the calls that were directed at Cherry as she would speak to one person at a time. I had three calls in which co-workers teased me about the situation I was in with these fools.
The emails went back and forth all day like this. At one point I just sat in the bathroom for 6 minutes thinking about how stupid it all was and about the office drama. A good friend of mine once told me that if the same problem is happening to you over and over, perhaps you are the problem. That was so true in the case of this office.
