Today, Teeth was being a larger than usual douchebag. Wolf Woman's daughter is working part-time in the office doing some much needed filing. She is a few months short of her eighteenth birthday.
She seems like a nice enough girl and very, very young. Naive, even. At lunch she said, "Man, I feel old. My hips are, like, hurting like crazy."
She looked at Immediate Supervisor and I. "Is this what you guys feel like all day?"
Teeth has obviously enjoying this new opportunity to push someone new around. And of course, despite the girl's tender years, she is grist for the mill. And Teeth has no sense of propriety.
For example, the Cub was saying during the morning break that she helped herself to a piece of salt water taffy from the front desk.
"With your braces?" Teeth said (notice how she is immediately aware of dental issues, even if they're not her own).
"Yeah, I had to suck on it a little to make it soft," said the Cub, which led to the inevitable sniggering and guffawing that we've all come to expect from the most innocent of remarks.
"Well then you're doing it wrong!" said Teeth to her own resounding laughter.
Ah, the wit. Is it not breath-taking?
Anyway, tomorrow is a pay cut off, so all of us billers are under the gun to get our work done before tomorrow at 4:30. Today, I did 96 bills, which is possibly more than any other biller in the office and certainly more than Teeth did. I was working diligently and my mind was on my work.
During afternoon break with Teeth, Wolf Woman and the Cub, I got up to leave the staff room and inadvertantly left behind a small ball of foil, the kind one finds wrapped around chocolate eggs. (Jesus God, I love those eggs, and these had been a gift from Princess Anne, the receptionist, with whom I talk horses all the time. She has a mare who is expecting to foal any day now. SQUEE!)
"Ah-ah-ah!" Teeth said, in a singsong tone. "You didn't clean up your garbage!"
I turned around, picked up the tiny ball and threw it into the garbage can, imagining to myself with immense satisfaction how much I wanted to flick it into Teeth's goofy face so that it lodged in her cornea.
"What's the matter? Aren't you doing well today?" she asked.
At this point, my back was turned to her, so I turned to face her and said, "Are you addressing me?"
"No," she said, snottily, "I'm talking to the other person who isn't doing well!"
I looked at her and said evenly, "First of all, I don't respond to sarcasm."
"Oh!" she said, but before she could slide in another passive aggressive remark, I said, "Secondly,I'm tired today."
"You must have had a good weekend then," she said, trying hard to be pleasant.
"I did."
And then I turned and walked away from her while she was still talking to me.
Fuck her.
Later on, I went to Wolf Woman's desk and apologized for having the scene in front of her. "I am tired, but there's no excuse for bad manners."
"Don't apologize," she said. "I get really tired of all the stupid shit, too. I'm glad you did it."
I was surprised, since Wolf Woman is Teeth's BFF at work. The more I scratch the surface, the more anti-Teeth sentiment I find. If all of these women had a chat with Immediate Supervisor, Teeth would be either unemployed or severely curtailed. So I do not understand why all the silence.
I find it especially appalling and mystifying because, of everyone there, Teeth behaves with the least self-awareness. Say what you will about Sylvester and her public pyjama wearing ways, she is conscious of what she is and she's comfortable in her skin. And (as we will see in a moment), Mrs. Orange might be a rat, but she knows exactly what she's doing. But Teeth: I don't believe she stops for one minute to contemplate how she behaves or why. She can't beat other women up anymore, so now she belittles and mocks them, but the behaviour and the motivation remain the same as it did twenty to twenty-five years ago. And she's mean. She's small and petty and mean and stupid.
And yet, everyone dances to her tune. We don't sit in "her" chair or park in "her" spot, so she essentially has the run of the place. She gets away with saying the most vulgar and insulting and demeaning things. She has entirely too much power and influence in that office despite the fact that she is, in my humble opinion, the person least deserving of it. It drives me crazy. It makes me want to start parking in her spot in the mornings, but then I'm stuck with a conundrum: if we don't park in her spot, she gets her way. If we do (god forbid) park in her spot, we still end up playing her power games and engaging in a power struggle that is frankly incredibly juvenile.
Either way for her, it's a win-win situation and I absolutely fucking hate it when the behaviour of bullies and douchebags is validated by success.
Yet all it would take to at least modify her behaviour is for each and every person who has been insulted and/or bullied and/or harrassed by her to say something. Just say it. Even in an email. Christ, if even half the billers said something to Immediate Supervisor, I'm sure they'd consider firing her vulgar little ass out the door.
So why don't they? I just don't get it. Can anyone explain?
In other WalMart Girl News, I got a ride home with Sylvester on Friday, because Immediate Supervisor let us go early and the Little Hunneydoo was picking the dids (kids+dogs=dids) up from the groomers. During the trip, Sylvester told me a story that only amplifies just how huge a fucking rat Mrs. Orange is.
Apparently, Sylvester's significant other is an adult baby. That is to say he derives sexual stimulation from wearing diapers, children's clothes (in adult sizes), being mothered, corrected, taught, etc. I don't know if in his case, it goes as far as shitting the diapers. There are things I simply do not wish to know. As far as I'm concerned, I already know too much.
Anyway, early on in her career at the office, Sylvester made the mistake of telling Mrs. Orange about the adult baby thing during a smoke break. Not five minutes had elapsed before Mrs. Orange was back inside the building, passing this juicy tidbit onto her podmate. Sylvester knows this because she caught Mrs. Orange doing it.
And Mrs. Orange didn't even have the gall to be embarrassed. No apology. Nothing. Obviously Mrs, Orange trades in the commodity of information as power. She has no alliances and yet she is friends with everyone, because everyone is a potential source. And she is as honest as she can afford to be about it, too.
On the other hand, I can't imagine telling something so private to someone at work, especially in THAT office.
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7 comments:
O.K I thought that the whole "Mean Girls" thing ended after you threw your square flat top hat in the air and gave your principle the finger.
These women have blessed you with the mind numbing event known as High School all over again, lucky you.
* (pssst) by the way to my shame I actualy thought the Salt water taffee joke was funny. Compleatly inappropriate for sure but, well, you know me. I offend people just standing next to them.
I'm unsure whether it's the ingrained social conditioning that Ladies Must Be Nice To Each Other (while not expecting niceness in return), or the desire to not make waves. But it sounds kinda like Geek Social Fallacies work in the mainstream world too.
Sir Knight,
In another place and time, if I hadn't endured a billion other comments from Teeth in a similar vein, I might have joined in. But this is just too much.
Batgirl,
*facepalm* People are sheep. That's all I can come up with.
Yet all it would take to at least modify her behaviour is for each and every person who has been insulted and/or bullied and/or harrassed by her to say something. Just say it. Even in an email.
I agree wholeheartedly on putting concerns or complaints in an email. It sets up a paper trail for later, when the behavior is not adjusted or diminished, there is proof that you voiced your concerns and they fell on deaf ears.
I returned from work today (2/28/11) and had to give a co-worker who was in a full on dither "the talk" (regarding how to deal with our own "high school" nonsense in our own office.)I told him pretty much to be a government worker: to come in on time and leave on time. To "be here" and "do what you can." He's got eight more months until he qualifies for his pension. I told him, "try to shift things into neutral, and hopefully coast for the next few months."
The hard part is, for many of us, we spend 1/3 of our waking hours at work, work hard, have a good work ethic, and cannot HELP but take things like this shit personally... because IT IS PERSONAL.
I say call the buck toothed bitch out on her crappy behavior. If more folks ostracize or shun her because of her boorish behavior, either it will elicit a change in her, or at the very least, you will remove her (as best as you can, given the circumstances) from your immediate space.
PS: Re: ingrained social conditioning... I'm a nice lady who tries to be nice to everyone; however, if someone treats me like crap, they get what I refer to my "B" or "C Game."
It's this very type of situation which has led me to believe, honestly and sincerely, that the "Golden Rule" is flawed, because it's not a universally held philosophy.
So many folks interpret niceness, kindness and generosity not as a strength of character, but as a weakness to be exploited.
PS: Re: shunning Teeth... I have found that indifference (as well as a very flat affectation when dealing with such folks) really DOES fuck with their minds.
I once had a situation where I ended up in a "counseling session" was getting spoken to and written up about my shoddy work (mind you everyone knew I was at work, in pain, and on muscle relaxants because I was in my probationary period here at work). And I sat there, with a flat affect, fully listening to everything that both of the bitches were saying to me. And one of them said, "You're not reacting at all to what we are saying. Are you even listening to us?" And I replied, "Yes. I listen with my ears and not my facial expressions. You spoke. I listened. If you're expecting me to break down in tears, it'll be a long wait."
I was actually thinking about the concept that "people are sheep" today, in a different context before I read your blog entry. I have a friend who's into conspiracy theory, and I have thoughts about the stupidity of that. I think the world is vastly more complex than any group of secret conspirators can ever get a handle on. If the people who are openly TRYING to run things like government can get it wrong so often, I don't see how any group operating in secret could possibly do BETTER.
But I digress. My point is that human beings generally tend, as individuals, to have more sense and more altruism than we give them credit for. But groups of people do not. Groups operate very differently from individuals, and can be relied upon to be less mature than the individuals who make up the group. Social theory is still pretty primitive, really, and we're just starting to look at the differences between individual motivations and behaviour, and group motivations and behaviour. I don't think it's Ladies Being Nice or anything, I think your experiences at work are just what groups do. One pathogenic individual can destroy an otherwise functional group and can even drive out the most functional members, if those people jeopardize the group's group-think.
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