The Hot Seat

Things at work have been going quite well, Two Clowns and her bullshit aside. Much of this has to do with the fact that Teeth has been absent for a week: it seems that after the lumpectomy, Teeth's mother-in-law bought the farm, making it necessary for Teeth and her pig-dog husband and the child to fly east for the funeral.

Now, I want you to know that I am--and I acknowledge that I am--a small and petty person. I cannot claim to have the milk of human kindness flowing through my veins. Nope, not me. And I say this because, when Teeth emailed the office last week to tell us that she had landed safely, but the airline lost her luggage, I laughed. Quietly to myself, mind you, but I did laugh. It also crossed my mind to wonder if she had to book an extra seat for her teeth, or if the child had to share...

See? I'm just nasty. Seriously.

But I don't--as a rule--inflict my behaiour on other people. I used to, absolutely, but that was before counselling. Now, I can share my thoughts and feelings with an individual or a group with the intention not of manipulating social situations, but rather to share what might be a common experience.

Not so much Teeth, who still managed to drive me right out of my fucking mind, even from 5000 kms away. Here's how:

The day after Teeth left for the east coast, Walter came and sat at her desk. Walter is an older fellow who is doing some light duties around the office while he recovers from some injury or whatever. Everyone calls him "Walt", but I pointedly address him as "Walter" because "Walt" is too familiar, and I don't want to give the old guy any encouragement. Believe me, he doesn't need any. He already sits next to me at lunch so closely that Yvette mentioned that he might as well sit in my lap.

Anyhoo, Walter sits in Teeth's chair and everything is going just fine until The Boss comes along to talk to Sylvester and stops dead in her tracks.

"Are you sitting in Teeth's chair?" she asks Walter in a tone of hushed horror.

"I'm sittin' in the chair that was here, yeah," says Walter.

"Omigod, did you adjust that chair?" says the Boss. (I should just call her Springsteen and get it over with).

"Well, I raised one of the arms up..." he starts, and Springsteen flips out.

"Okay, you need to get out of that chair and get another one," she tells him and ushers him out of the office chair in which he has been productively ensconced for several hours.

"If Teeth comes back and finds that someone has messed with her chair, she'll freak out."

At this point, I turn around to see Springsteen in a flap, wheeling Teeth's chair into a nearby office and returning with another.

"Sylvester, don't let anyone else sit in Teeth's chair," says Springsteen, and goes back to her office.

By this time, I am having to vitually staple myself into my own chair to resist the temptation to get up and fuck with Teeth's chair so badly, she would never get it right again. Of course, Teeth's many chairs of entitlement are a Big Red Button for me, and Springsteen's reaction was pounding on said Big Red Button with a Gigantic Hammer.

But what stunned and amazed most me was Springsteen's tolerance, and consequent tacit encouragement, of Teeth's childishness.

As a friend of mine has remarked, "Someone needs to grow a pair."

But it didn't end there, either.

The next day, Stretch (one of the dispatchers) and a driver sat at Teeth's desk to go over a routing issue or something. Somehow, Teeth's chair had migrated back into our pod, as if it couldn't bear to be separated from her desk a moment longer. Stretch sat in the alternate, and as the driver went to take the coveted Chair of Toothsomeness, Sylvester warned him away.

"You can't sit there," she said. "That's Teeth's seat."

The driver looked around for Teeth and didn't find her.

"She's not here," Sylvester said.

"And I can't sit in the chair?" he said.

I couldn't take this stupidity in silence any longer.

"No," I said, loudly enough for all three pods to overhear. "Apparently, we are held hostage by her behaviour."

This provoked much laughter, some of which I'm sure was inspired by uneasiness, but I don't care. She just has to try that kind of shit with me ONCE, and see what happens. As it is, I can't believe that Springsteen puts up with hysterics over a fucking chair from a supposed adult. Did someone adjust your chair? Then adjust it back, you fucking ditchpig. Get a fucking grip.

So, needless to say, I'm not looking forward to her return tomorrow. No doubt I will have to listen to dreary details about a funeral I care nothing about, over and over and over again. Because that's another thing Teeth does that makes me nuts: she repeats her stories endlessly. She will even call Springsteen over and read her emails that Teeth is exchanging with billers at other branches, because Teeth is convinced of her own brilliant wit as a god-given fact of life.

Anyway, that's all petty shit. I will say in my defense, however, that if Teeth returns to find the chair altered in anyway, it wasn't me who did it. I managed to maintain my dignity and self-respect.

But it doesn't stop me from hoping to Christ that someone else did it for me.