She waited the good three minutes for her computer to start. While waiting her stomach appeared to be doing a ventriloquist act with the desk across the aisle. She was then telling herself that only eating a cucumber salad was a dangerous diet choice as the gas would most likely cause her insides to continue a discussion for most of the day. While also interrupting any other words her mouth made by threatening a burp or even worse a fart to be released during quiet moments. She knew that she would also likely, due to trying to stem off the burps and farts then have terrible pain in her abdomen from holding in the determined gas which seemed to be plaguing her. She considered going to the ladies room, but as all women knew at ten am there was an influx of coffee silent poops which would be in progress of the busy three cubicle toilet stalls. The silent and often stinky poops had a fight club mentality of “First rule: you do not speak about woman poops, Second rule: you do not speak about woman poops smell, Third rule: you smell a bad smell, you do not comment, just avert your gaze wash your hands and get out, Fourth rule: woman do not fart, we are to uphold this myth even in front of other woman.”
She anxiously went into the free stall realising the stall on the left and right were occupied and hearing the normal peeing sound was waiting for a moment during a flush she could fart a ripper without everyone hearing it. Unfortunately, the unknowns to either side appeared to not be done as she heard the sounds of plops and a possible diarrhea shower which then was over taken by a smell which made her cover her nose with her shirt. The woman obviously had ate something with onions in it the previous night and very possibly a garbage truck of refuse from a Korean deli. Realising that the air was running out, she knew that she had to get out of the stall as a life and death situation. So she let lose the fart which she had been holding for what seemed like hours. It started off as a squeak then slowly became a trombone trumpet and finished with a jazz saxophone squall which was so long, that she almost felt she deserved a standing ovation at the concert she had managed to perform. Flushing the toilet, she felt an annoyance as she heard another person flush which always felt an intrusion into your private time of washing your hands and drying them, then checking the mirror to ensure your makeup looked okay and taking a moment before braving the public again. Instead she had to avoid the other woman’s gaze as she blocked the towels to dry her hands which were now dripping on the tiled floor and then smiled a small insecure smile as she scooted past to the mirror to touch up their make up. All the while thinking ‘You have diarrhea and eat too much onion’. The other woman was obviously thinking ‘you stuck a trumpet up your bum’.
She finally made her way back to her desk and tried to forget the horrible smell experienced and added to, by herself, of the ladies room. She saw an ominous email from human resources, saying they wanted to talk with her. Thinking languidly that ‘shit’ seemed to be the subtext of the day, she made her way up to the third floor to the human resources desk. They had so few needed people that they shared a single desk. She waited patiently, realising that Sybil would probably be one of the ten o’ five poopers rather than the ten o’clock poopers.
Sybil came back and her fat little, young face registered shock. She looked a bit like a pug dog that had been startled. She then tried to get some authority by frowning, which again looked like a pug dog looking constipated.
“You asked to see me,” She asked Sybil patiently, while she flustered around her desk looking nervous. She obviously had not expected a person to be direct with her.
“Oh well, you see, um well, you really should have asked for a meeting,” she blustered, trying to find something on her computer to save her, “well we need to know why you were sick, to sign off on your sick leave.”
“I had a cold,” she responded.
“No, we need the doctor to say that!”
“I think the doctor saying I was unfit for work, would cover that. If I went to a gynaecologists appointment and had a yeast infection, do you think you had a right to know that?” She admonished the pug woman.
“We need to know!” Sybil said truculently.
“You need to know of my sexual health? Wow, didn’t see that in the guidelines of employment. Are you going to ask my doctor for photos as well?”
“If you need time off because you are having issues then its our business,” she said haughtily.
“Are you joking me, that is very against the privacy act. Listen, I don’t want you to crash as you’re young. If you continue, I’m going to need to raise this with the ombudsman’s office. I do know you guys pay off the union but hopefully they aren’t yet corrupted?”
“No, um what, what you are doing is against policy!”
“Honey, policy is not above law. The privacy act is law. Your policy becomes nothing when faced with an actual law. Policy is flowery little sayings like “do your best” compared with “Do not murder”. Get what I mean?”
“But we have a right to ask you for medical information!”
“Only if it has caused a significant question to my work, which I can actually prove that people were interrupting my sick leave and sending the work home, while a respected doctor said I was not able to work, your company went against the doctors orders. Which made you endanger my health. I could easily put in a claim that you endangered me.”
“It’s not our fault if you decided to work while you were sick!” The pug howled.
“Actually the fact that a Manager sent me work and said I had to do it or I’d be fired, is both against law and our policies, so I’m afraid you don’t have a leg to stand on,” she watched as the pug human became more flustered and wondered if she should throw a stick for her to chase until she calmed down, “listen, I know you need to talk to your bosses and I can make it easy for you by putting in an email saying I’m going to report this to the ombudsman’s office and you can forward that to your boss. It’s also part of the guidelines on how to submit a claim, so you have a chance to rectify the problem before they become involved. So, your only job is to forward my email on when I send it to you okay?”
The pug woman looked up with hopeful eyes and nodded. She had to stop herself from patting Sybil on the head and saying “good girl!” as she walked back the way she had come. She pondered the fact that in the past Human Resources were actually hired to help employees. Unfortunately due to weak unions and over the top bureaucracy they turned into soul sucking monsters, that often were hired because they lacked enough brain cells to question the idiocy of their actions.
She got back to her desk and saw that her inbox had had an influx of emails in the few minutes she had been away from her desk. This was not surprising as due to it being Friday, the race to clear ones work from their own to do list became almost a race. Suddenly a thousand jobs were thrown about to every staff member in the building, because the one person who’s job it actually was, could not be bothered doing it when it landed in their inbox. So they let other people faff about and pass it along until a week had past and it arrived back in their inbox. They then blame the last person who passed it along, so it was a literal game of hot potato.
She was a master at the game, after weeks of recognising the tricks of fellow players and she could generally shoot the potato back to the one who threw it at her, but if she left her desk for five minutes then all the players would attack at once. They thought if she had to go through the numerous emails one by one, she would not be able to get through them, so the problem would be left until the next weeks new game. But she would not be defeated, she started to skim read and sent emails flying back to people and telling them to contact others instead of her. That was another blocking tactic as you’re sending it back as well as telling them the next player instead of just forwarding it along. That way, if questioned, she could explain that they need to learn who to ask about these things and as a good team player she helped them. No one could question her saintly advice or pass the potato back to her as she had the email chain to back her up. The other players eventually got bored of picking on her as they realised they would be better served sending the email to someone who had stupidly taken Friday off and could not send it backwards.
She knew that her co-workers resented her speed at doing her job, but she had never found it difficult as she focussed on what she could do, rather than procrastinating something to death. She immediately took action and instead of theorising about something, showed them how it could be done. This meant a project which was meant to be three months of work would suddenly become three weeks. The ditherers were the hinderance to any project and unfortunately it appeared to be the sole job of a manager. She wondered if they actually put a question in as part of the selection criteria when they applied for their job;
“Please describe how you would stall an employee from completing a project and causing them to become constipated and possibly bald by frustration?”
Her managers reply – “First I would book a meeting, then two more meetings to discuss with three different sets of people, even if I could have combined them and had them talk directly with each other. After that I would book a meeting with them all together and promise things which are not possible without a magic wand. Then finally once they all agreed on the impossibility I would tell the single person who is to do the work and then sneer at them as they tell me why what I have planned is not possible. I will then ask seven other people and get the same reply and then have to make another impossible plan to tell the three different sets of people and repeat the process. I will repeat the whole thing at least five times before I allow the person who is actually doing the project to talk with the stakeholders and show them what can actually be done.”
Janet coughed to try get her attention from her ponderings,”Are you coming to drinks tonight?”
The casual Friday clothing choices were sad in the office. She had no idea why old women thought young peoples clothing made them look better when it had the opposite effect, she had no idea why skinny legged men thought they could wear shorts in public, she didn’t know why some thought sequins ever were in style and the list of bad fashion choices continued. Janet was wearing an outfit from Forever Twenty One and it made her look forever sixty three.
“No, I have previous plans,” she replied, thinking that as she worked with them for eight hours a day, five days a week, then any free time from them should be cherished.
“You’re so anti-social you really should come its fun and most of the girls can’t come anymore as they are pregnant!” Janet tried to convince her. Though the comment of most of the office females were pregnant, was actually true. She seemed to need to avoid a distended belly as part of her workout through the day. If going down a hallway, you couldn’t walk in a straight line, you’d have to zig and zag. She luckily had never had to do a jump frog leap or tunnel dive through a waddlers legs yet, but she was prepared if she had to in order to get past the huge women who had taken over the building. She got a paranoid thought that her sex ed teachers had actually lied to her and pregnancy was caught like a virus rather than through sex. She kept covering her nose and mouth each time a pregnant woman came near her, just in case.
“Which pub are you going to?” She asked.
“The Kings. There is a live band tonight and me and some of the others are getting dinner first at the Rose,” Janet enthused, mistaking her curiosity for interest. She actually just wanted to know which pubs to avoid if she was going to go out.
She had once managed to get a bit drunk and ran into the boring pair of ladies from work and had actually told them, apparently in an Irish accent, that she couldn’t talk to them as she needed to milk the cows in the morning. She was lucky that they thought it was funny rather than rude. Janet, after telling her what time they’d be there, assuming she would be stupid enough to show up, finally went back to her seat. She got interrupted again as Shaun’s disgusting presence became apparent by the fact he actually made the air rot around him. She imagined a comical plant, withering, as he walked past it. “Guess what?” He smiled, making his lips disappear.
“That Abraham Lincoln is in the Wrestling Hall of Fame. Out of roughly 300 matches in his youth, he reportedly only lost one?” She asked sincerely while nodding.
“What? No, um,” Shaun’s face turned confused, to thoughtful, to angry, to dismissive in a few heartbeats then he continued, “I’m going to present the new program you created at a show in the next month, so you need to tell me what you did to make it work.”
“You think my jobs that easy? I can give you three dot points and you’ll have a university degree to understand all I know?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Well this is hardly the attitude of a team player!”
“Never said I was, I do my job and create things which are good enough to show off. I do not do it so I then will need to teach someone who has not worked for a degree or the experience that I have gained to then steal credit for my work.”
“It was a team effort, you weren’t the only one doing it!”
“Really? Those fourteen hour days and no weekends were pretty lonely.”
“I had to talk to a lot of people and tell them when it was working!”
“I can see how difficult that must have been, for you, do forgive me for thinking my efforts were higher than yours,” she finished sarcastically. He did not seem to comprehend the sarcasm and smiled going back to his desk, thinking he had won the argument.
She looked at the clock and was counting down the seconds for it to hit twelve. She had decided to not come back after lunch and had already put in the flex time sheet that she wouldn’t be returning. She hadn’t submitted it as Shaun liked to monopolise and have meetings about time off and she found it less likely he would reject the leave if she just left. She also knew he would try to get her to come back to the office, so she needed to race to the pub, drink really quickly and get the bar tender to tell him that she had already had three pints so he couldn’t force her back to the office.
Three, two, one, submit and she ran for the door…
As she walked through the pub door, she was pleased to see her usual bar tender and he had a pint with her before she sat down, “keep them coming,” she said as she handed him her credit card.
“How’s the week been?” He asked as he set the next glass up to be filled.
“Thank goodness its Friday,” she replied as her phone started ringing…
