Papercuts...everyday drama

    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.

Papercuts...Familiar things

    I started to feel slightly buzzed when I returned from the mail room. The smell in the office smacked me in the face when I opened the door. It was the smell of Oldie. She has a unique and intoxicating scent about her. I could picture her getting ready for work each morning. She must place a smidge of Aspercream on her back, a smear of Icy Hot on her ankles, and a swipe of Ben Gay on each knee. The scent had become familiar to me. I sat down at my desk and looked over at Oldie. She was turned away from her computer monitor and staring out of the window behind her desk. I knew what ritual was about to happen. She slowly and methodically reached over to her desk and popped the top on her little can of Joint Juice. She slowly reached for a small bourbon glass filled with ice and carefully poured the Joint Juice over the ice. She looked like she was deliberately acting in a commercial with slow motion. The glucosomine concoction bubbled and fizzed over the ice. Oldie threw the small can into the trash can and swiveled back around to look out of the window. During this ritual she was oblivious to my gaping at her. A glazed look came over her eyes and I could tell that she was somewhere else in her mind. She took tiny sips of the drink and savored each second in her state. I wonder what she thought about each day as she sipped the unpalatable drink. In my own glassy- eyed daydream, I would imagine HER dreams of being a firm, tanned, bikini clad, 23 year old sitting by a pool in some warm, exotic location. Her scent would be of coconut suntan lotion, pineapples, and maraschino cherries. She would have long, wavy, shiny, rich chestnut hair that cascaded over her majestically perfect breasts. Periodically she would flip her hair over her shoulder and let it hang down her back as she tanned. She would be unapproachable to most. Perhaps some brave, dashing, muscular, young, tanned man would offer to buy her a drink from the poolside bar. She would lower her sunglasses down her nose, squint her eyes, take him up on his offer, lift her sunglasses back to cover her eyes, and wait for him to return. He would return with a pale orange fruity drink filled with fruit and proceed to chat her up. She would drink the drink seductively, but he surely would not get her telephone number. She would have that power. She is the queen of any pool.
     Around 1:15 each day, I would be ripped from my staring at Oldie and she from her hunk by the pool by Cherry's chatter as she returned from lunch with Smarty. Cherry talks A LOT. One morning I heard her talking to people all the way from a block away until she got into the office, through the entire day, and out the door at the end of the day. It's annoying, yet amazing. By the end of each day, she is hoarse from talking so much. After a telephone call, she will tell Smarty what was said...word for word. After she receives an email, she will read the email to Smarty, a discussion will ensue, and a response will be deliberated...all vocally. In telling Smarty everything, Oldie and I are forced to hear it all too. Cherry even talks to herself. By 3 o'clock each day, I am in sensory overload. Just when it looks like we will get a few minutes of sweet silence, someone calls or emails Cherry and she starts at it again. I often go to the bathroom just to hear nothing. It's just too much.
   Cherry sat down at her desk and started to talk out loud about what WE need to accomplish for the remainder of the day. You see, there have to be forms and reports generated to tell us if we are doing the right things with the forms and paper we push. These forms and reports are generated on a weekly schedule. The MSR (Money Spent Report) tells how much money was spent for the total week. The ROP (Report On Prices) tells how much the supplies purchased can be bought for. The FRL (Forms Received Late) tells what forms were received late. The FROT (Forms Received On Time) tells what forms were received on time. The SWN (Supplies We Need) tells the supplies needed. The PEQ (Paper Extraction Query) tells what forms and reports should be printed each week. The APM (All Paper Managed) tells what forms and reports were generated throughout the week. The MOR (Mismanagement of Resources) tells what resources were not used to their fullest potential. Lastly, the SOR (Statement of Results) ties it all together in some way. We print off all of these reports and forms. Cherry pretends to study them all the while talking. We make photocopies of them all, file a copy of each, mail out a copy of each to corporate headquarters, and shred the ones that were generated from last weeks batch of the same forms. Week after week, year after year.

Another day at the office

  I could hear the soft chatter of two of my co-workers as they talked from the back of the office about what they saw on TV last night. The Lifetime channel was a favorite for them. In between the chatter there were long and loud sips from their coffee cups. I managed to sit at my desk and Facebook an old friend for 10 minutes before anyone noticed that I was in the office. Oldie and Smarty appeared from the back with their coffee cups plastered to their wrinkled lips. They seemed surprised when they saw me at my desk. I could not hear everything that they were previously talking about, but chances were some portion of it was about me and my "attitude".  Smarty asked how my night was, opened the door and left all in one motion. She didn't stick around to get my response. I hadn't planned on giving her one anyway.  Oldie sat down at her desk, creaking all the way down into her seat. Smarty came back in the office from her smoke- break and rushed to her desk as if checking her Facebook account was an urgent matter. There was complete silence except for the clicking of our computer keys.
   And then, in comes Cherry. She's only 30 minutes late today. When her hand touches the door her mouth instantly starts to produce words. She waves her hand in a general motion of "hello" to everyone and starts talking about how her youngest son just couldn't stand to leave her today when she dropped him off at school, how she was tired from baking from-scratch cupcakes last night for her other son's class, how her husband and her just had to celebrate his getting a part in the newest play at the local theater. All of this was said as she breezed through the office, past our desks, and into her office. Smarty immediately ran into Cherry's office to help her put her purse up and get her out of her coat. Oldie had a huge, fake grin on her face. I just sat there staring at all of them as the reality hit me that I was in this situation.
   Smarty brought a fresh mug of coffee into Cherry's office and sat it on her desk. She warned Cherry that it was fresh brewed and for her to let it cool down before she drank it. I couldn't believe Smarty felt she had to tell an adult woman not to drink scolding hot coffee. Smarty told Cherry that she had prepared cassoulet and coq au vin for dinner. I had noticed that she always pronounced her cooking endeavors with an accent that matched the country of origin. I almost peed myself from laughter once when she told of the night she made Swedish cuisine and pronounced fiskbuller and isterband like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets. Like my husband always says, "you can buy an education, but you can't buy class". Cherry and Smarty seemed completely engrossed in each other. I noticed that they looked each other in the eyes when the talked to each other. I just can't do that. I can't look people in the eyes. It makes me want to laugh. Or, I'm always looking for boogers peeking out of their noses or hair growing in weird places. I was ripped away from my thoughts when Oldie stood up from her chair and her right knee got fired up for the morning. She shook her legs like an athlete preparing for a high jump and then pranced into Cherry's office. I watched the three of them. I saw something at that moment that caught my attention. I noticed that Cherry and Smarty were wearing the same pendant on their necklaces. This friendship is out of control. Oldie was soon sitting in a chair in Cherry's office all to herself with no one paying attention to her. She was in deep thought. What was on her mind?
   

The start of a tale...Papercuts

  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?