Trouble in The Office

A Rotten Tomato in the Queen's Garden

"I got your present," I said to Marnee. She gave me strawberry and mint flavored condoms. "Red and green. Perfect for the holidays."

"Sorry I couldn't get you the ribbed ones. Store ran out. I know how much you love them."

"Loka loka." And threw her a crumpled ball of paper. Monito monita ended days ago, but Marnee was still in the mood for giving away naughty presents. Yesterday she sent old Jonders from accounting a big can of whipped cream. Marnee had meant it to mean something else -- but Jonders? Jonders just thought that Nestle All Purpose was still the best for fruit salad.

"So, you think Dense is going to get anything?" Marnee picked up the big boxed gift on my table. It was from one of my planners. I kinda guessed it was a memo pad.

"I don't know," I said. Dense was almost always in our conversations lately. The reason we called her Dense was because everybody in the team, except Sts. Agnes and Jane from CategMan, hated her to pieces. She acts like she doesn't know. We all wanted her to "move on" to another line of work, like organic farming.

Marnee rolled her eyes up. "I can't understand why the Queen hasn't let her go like she did to Charms. Charms was ineffecient, but not thick. At least she knew she wasn't wanted. She resigned the moment she felt it. Poor girl." We called our big boss the Queen, and that's because she went about our day to day speaking with a genuine English accent. We loved her for it. We pretended we were in some bizarre sitcom spinoff.

"The Queen must be biding her time. You can't fire someone like Dense just like that. You have to have grounds for it."

"But duh? She's got grounds since two years ago. Let's list them, shall we? Half a year's worth of absence without leave, lying about her leave, shirking reports, shirking strategy creation, shirking execution, lying about her neck condition, lying about her hepatitis, going on trips while her staff groped about operational stuff, and yes, lying lying lying. The biggest category in the company is going to suffer with her leading it. She has no leadership to speak of. Bah, Aling Josie could do a better job e!"

"You've really got it going, Marnee. Keep it cool," I said. Aling Josie was the cleaning lady.

"Hey. You were angrier over Dense than I'll ever be. "

"That's true." Months ago, I took Dense's favorite fountain pen and threw it out the window after she failed, yet again, on another deliverable. I had hoped it landed on her brand new car. But I had forgiven her since then. Or, forgiven may not be the right word. Maybe forgotten is more apt? I had started to forget she existed.

"How could she sleep at night, that witch!" Marnee was probably thinking about that time where Dense fooled her into doing one of her reports for Global by namedropping The Queen. And it wasn't an easy report. Marnee chaffed her fingers doing the numbers.

"Are you giving her anything for Christmas?" I asked.

"If I could give her a heart, I would. She hasn't had one, I think."

Pink-tied Glen walked up to us sucking on a long green popsicle. "Thanks for the pop, Marnee," he said, and winked. "What are you girls talking about? Dense again?"

"Yeah," I said. "I think we'd better stop talking about her. Ever. It's evil, you know. It's one of the seven capital sins."

"Well, you may forgive just this one interesting piece of info," Glen licked the melting popsicle from stem to tip. "I have heard from the royal grapevine that Dense may be off by the New Year."

"No," Marnee said, disbelieving.

"Yep," Glen said. "I think Her Royal Highness has finally put together the case against her."

"Do you feel sorry?" Marnee asked me. "What would you feel if you saw her tight little ass kicked out of the office forever?"

"I never thought that it would occur," I said. "But how could you feel sorry for a pebble in a shoe?"

"Well done, Stepmother," Glen said, getting the analogy, and off he disappeared into the blue cubicles, licking the rest of the popsicle.

"The New Year is going to be very exciting," Marnee said.

You betcha.

Labels: employees, office politics

posted by Elyss @ 5:09 PM