I like to think of myself as a forgiving, understanding individual. One can only put up with so much. I had this employee, let’s call her Darla, who was desperate to have a man in her life. We were traveling consultants, spending 5 nights away from home, so starting a relationship was difficult. Since she had no friends, I felt sorry for her and made friends with her at work.
My sad story is about a woman I used to work with (best day of my life was when I left the company).
It’s so hard to know where to begin with this silly cow. However, we’ll start by calling her “Ashley”. I was the receptionist/administrator for the department and saw all the potential hires (and read most of the resumes) for “Ashley’s” job. She was certainly not the most suitable applicant by a mile but I digress.
We had our company party this evening…
Every holiday season, our tiny ad agency holds an annual party for the 4 employees, 3 full-time freelancers who’ve worked there for years, and all of our clients and a few vendors. The party this year was at a very fancy 5-star restaurant–the kind where the entree is 1/10th the size of the plate. OK, nice party, about 40 people all dressed up, and the boss/owner of the agency starts making glorious comments about how wonderful it’s been to work with such a great staff of people, blah, blah. Endless raves about the clients and how good it is to be in business for five years, blah, blah.
I worked as a secretary and medical courier dispatcher for a number of years. The doctors (like most doctors) had a superiority complex that could really get on our nerves. But for the most part we just smiled and nodded when they treated us like morons for not having a MD behind our name. However, there were some just beautiful moments when they revealed just how human they were.
Once one of the doctors was at the lab and wanted to step outside for a smoke. He’d forgotten his lighter so I lent him one. He went outside and came back in about five minutes later.
Doctor: L, this lighter is broken.
Me: What do you mean? What’s wrong with it?
Doctor: It won’t work. See?
*The doctor proceeds to try and use it*
Me: Uh, it’s a child safe lighter…
*I take the lighter, flip off the safety and it works*
Doctor: Oh…
Another time I got this angry and frantic call from one of the doctors. His pager quit working and it was imperative that we send a courier to pick it up and take it to be repaired or replaced ASAP. We sent a courier over stat to get it but before I took someone off their route to get it fixed/replaced I told them to bring me the pager so I could look at it. After confirming that it did not turn on I opened up the battery compartment on the off chance the batteries just needed to be replaced. It was empty. The man had freaked out because he’d removed the batteries to his pager and surprisingly it no longer worked. New batteries fixed the problem and I had the courier bring it back to him.