Stuck in my head

You know how you get that annoying song, they keep playing over and over again on the radio, stuck in your head? At first it’s just a nuance. You don’t really like it, but it’s catchy and you can live with hearing it once a day or so. Then it seems like it’s being played every other song and you really start to get annoyed. Finally you catch yourself going around humming it, that’s when you begin to despise it, really hate it.

Well I got a new co-worker last month that worked her way from a little annoying nuance to despise and hate in just a day and a half. I’m guessing she could be a really nice person if she just kicked that nasty habit of hers – talking. I don’t mean that she should talk less, I mean that she should stop talking altogether.

It’s not easy for me to get away from her since we share an office. Office might be a stretch, it’s more like large cubicle with two desks.

Two hours in to her first day she had talked to me about nothing and everything for about an hour and 45 minutes. The other 15 minutes she had been on the phone with customers, so she was still talking even if it wasn’t to me. She was starting to become an annoying nuance.

Then I finally got a call from a customer and she had to shut up, at least I thought so. I was very pleased when she went quiet and started typing intensively on her keyboard. About two minutes in to the conversation I got an email. I cautiously opened it up while I kept talking on the phone. It was from HER and it was an elaborate report on her cats eating habits. Another minute or so passed and I got one more email from her. This time it was about how well we were getting on. Yeah, right! Now I started to get really annoyed.

It went on like this for the rest of day. The next day started the same way, but after breakfast our boss came to get her. He was going to give her a tour of the place and properly introduce her to everyone. Poor bastards. I let out a silent sigh of relief as they walked away. Now I could get some work done. I anticipated that the tour would take about 30 minutes. 45 minutes later she was still not back and I felt like I was in heaven. The phone rang and I picked up. It was HER. She wanted to let me know that she was in the bathroom and was a bit constipated. It was starting to loosen up now, so she thought she would be back in 10-15 minutes. This pushed her in to the final stage. I now despised her. Hated her.

After her fourth day at the office I decided that I needed to get away from her a few minutes every other hour at least. I needed to release the tension and stress she caused, otherwise I would get an ulcer in no time for sure. On my way to work that Friday I picked up a pack of cigarettes. The smokers in the office go on short smoke breaks every now and then. It also seems to calm them down. At age 34 I smoked my first cigarette. I realized it would shorten my life with 10 years or so, but if it meant I could get away from HER for 20-30 minutes a day it was a sacrifice I was glad to make.

I kept up the smoking for a little more than an week, but as it turns out I hate smoking even more than I hate her. I needed to find another way to get away from her and I needed to find it now or I would go mad.

We have a very big archive in the basement. I settled on going down there. Every chance I got I went down there and went over all the old files. I threw out outdated folders, the ones we still needed I sorted according to year and alphabetized them within every year. I thought this task would take months, but it seems I am a very efficient worker when I get some peace and quiet. I finished it in only two weeks.

After two more whole days with her I actually began to plot out how I could get rid of her. Not how to get her fired or transferred. How to get RID of her.

That’s when the boss called me up to his office. He wanted to let me know that he was very impressed with my performance the last month. He thought I had worked very hard and had really showed that I was willing to go the extra mile for the company. Apparently he had found my work in the archives outstanding and now it was my time. He told me I was up for promotion.

I was going to get a big raise, a yearly bonus and an expense account. That’s all fine, but to be perfectly honest I would have agreed to a decreased salary and paying a yearly fee if I just got the last part of the deal. Not the expense account, that wasn’t the last part of the deal. No the last part of the deal was an office two floors up!

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