A Knowing Glance From the Water Cooler

My workspace is "conveniently" located directly next to the pantry. This would seem advantageous, except that the floor isn't too large to begin with so a chance to stretch your legs is generally anticipated. Sitting right there is sort of like being seated in a restaurant next to the kitchen. Terrible. It's gross because you're so close to whomever's food is being prepared, and also it makes for an excessive amount fake pleasantries and slient head bobs of "what's up?" with the entire office all damn day long when you don't really care, you just want to do your work whatever it is you were doing without being so...exposed all the time.

And don't think I don't see you taking a nice cold cup of water at the water cooler and sneaking a glance at me, fellas. I see you. It's creepy. Plus, I look like shit, so you should be ashamed of yourselves. Where are your standards, leering at me? You're that hurting for eye candy? Eeww. But at least I showered today--and if you're not going to, you should at the very least brush your hair. I mean COME ON! I see the pillow mark in your 'do! Gross! Pull yourself together. Get some self respect. Anyway, it's tedious to sit there because these people are fucking strange. Miserable, serious personality disorders, plus they look weird.

Luckily, today I met a nice, pretty blonde woman, stylish and normal-- totally in my genus as well as my species, if you will-- named Whitney who was waiting behind me to use the copier, also "conveniently" directly next to my work space. I introduced myself and told her I was temping here until January. A few hours later in the pantry, she complimented me on my new bag. The first compliment is a much-anticipated and quite integral part of every purchase of a new accessory. So, I like Whitney. She is not one of the freaks. She also managed to re-heat for herself a very nice BBQ brisket dinner for lunch in the microwave. Everybody commented on it to her. About how great it smelled and what was it and stuff.

Speaking of freaks, my boss had a difficult time managing her mania today, which she unleashed on me. Let me try and describe it. If you can imagine being yelled at by a 4-foot tall, sleep and nutrition-deprived mouse in a knee-length and dirty Cat-in-the Hat T-shirt with her fingernail beds gnawed so incredibly raw as to blind the hapless observer just from the sheer horror of it all? That might help you understand a little about what my afternoon was like. Add to this the fact that even though NYC is in the midst of a balmy 60 degree Indian Summer, the Empire State Building has officially turned on her / his radiator heat for the season, and it's on until May 2007.

Joy.

The offices are sweltering and though tenants can open the lovely and large working windows (something that new buildings don't have), they rarely do very much because they claim their papers will fly around. I argue it's because they feel they'd be compelled to jump, but I think it's a little of both. As I described earlier, I sit no office, but near the pantry in a secretary station with no access to windows of any kind. To say that I was sweating my balls off today is an extremely polite way for me to put it while I enjoyed the following sentences hurled at me in rapid fire succession:

"Where were you??! I thought you were just going to go down to the lobby to see when the next mail pickup was?!!"
"But you didn't write down how many copies you made!! It's charged to Marshall!"
"You closed Word Perfect again!!! Why do you keep closing it? Keep it open!!! It's just easier!!!"
"You didn't make those copies!Or you lost them. Where are the copies? Now you'll have to make them again. Did you know we're charged 17 cents a copy???"
"Did you alter this toolbar? I can't get find the 'create new folder' icon now! !!Why did you fiddle with this???? Great. You moved stuff in the Word Perfect toolbar. Why did you do that? ??This is a huge waste of time and now I have all this other stuff to do and I can't find how to create a new folder!!!"

If further explanation on this color commentary is required, I must mention that I had nothing to do with all the shit she was talking. And the only way I knew I was going to be able to ride out this hurricane of sweaty mouse mania was to let her roll, roll on and on and on, and with hope, it would in turn roll off of my back. And frankly, for as horrible as it was, I was simply just too hungover to deal. Sometimes being hungover can actually help you, and this was a prime example. I also was enormously hungover the day I got the shitcan from my last job. Why fight a battle you're going to lose? I was just too hurting to let the stupid turkeys get me down on a lame techincality, and that happened to be a good thing. The sober Anne would try to fight it, wasting words and most likely saying stupid shit. This time, I said little and left with a lot of hang over and nothing in my stomach but pride-- and a sausage biscuit.

They say drunks survive accidents more often than sober people because they're "relaxed." It's true. I went to college with a dude who fell 5 flights through center of a staircase through the wooden railings and down to the marble tiled lobby of an old dorm during a hallway kegger, and I was there. Hallway keggers were banned soon after this incident. His fall was broken gracefully by bouncing his back off the top of a ten-speed bike which was chained to the landing railing. I was at the bottom of the stairs and got a front row seat for the show. Um, ouch? An accident like this would paralyze most people, but not Bobby*. Thankfully, Bobby was a booze bag, and Bobby lived to tell. Had he tried to break his own fall, he'd now be blinking once for "One beer" and blinking twice for "Two beers." To his aging parents.

Same deal here with avoiding the mouse tornado. Close your eyes, and the tornado too shall soon pass. If you can't see it, it can't see you. Just breathe through it. Well, at some point after those particularly insane blow ups, and the Mouse scampered back into her office, I must have muttered under my breath--or mouthed silently with dramatic eye rolls to the sky-- "Crazy!" And apparently Whitney observed this from the water cooler in the pantry. I was so hungoer, I didn't even realize I had done it. Until she approached me.

"Yeah, she's...crazy. Yeah."
"Wow. She's fucking crazy, right?"
"Yeah. You're working for her until January?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, we were talking, the two girls I work with, we wondered if you'd last until January."
"Great."
"Yeah. Has her son been in yet?"
"No."
"Oh. Then it gets really crazy."
"Great."

Whitney also said that there was an old guy in one of the offices who was caught sitting at his desk this weekend totally naked. Last week he assaulted another old attorney in the hallway. He and his wife and their one employee cook fish at the office on the weekends. And all kinds of other crazy bullshit. I will find out legitimate details and report back.

*Crappy student but got by, a Long Island guy who bartended summers at the Boardy Bar in the Hamptons, and now he's a stock broker with a wife and 4 kids in CT.