Office Drama

OFFICE DRAMA

Did she lead him on? Maybe someone knows, but they aren’t talking. She could have given him the moon and the stars in the back seat during lunch break, but it wouldn’t matter. At the end of it all when she said no; he should have just accepted it. Now we all fear for our lives.
At first we thought he’d just go away. That’s what happens when people are canned. Sometimes people are nice enough to resign or retire and then there is cake. Either way, gone is gone. Not this guy though. His kid committed suicide years ago. When the kid died, his marriage followed. We invited him to work with our little office family; he took it too seriously. He moved in. He filled his office with household junk, statues and pictures. Then the stuff began to ooze its way out of his area and into ours. Flea market statues adorned for the holidays sat on the half wall for all to see. He had guns in there too.
Working with us wasn’t enough, he wanted more. She was nice to him and again he took it too seriously. The company did everything they could think of to protect the girl and keep the guy. They even sent him to work out of a different state. Still, he would try to use other employees to send her little gifts. When her husband died it got worse. After he was seen in the bushes at the funeral, he was disowned from his new family.
He hired one of the most commercially well known law firms to send the company a letter. The guy is mad in every sense of the word. He wants his job back and says the company fired him for all the wrong reasons. The one I liked best was racial discrimination. That’s never a joke in an office unless delivered by a white man. He was a joke and we treated it like it was joke. Management took it seriously though. They had fired him because he was stalking an employee.
Whispers in offices have a way of slinking through office corridors. We knew that the company was talking to their lawyer. Three inches of paperwork against the guy was forwarded to his lawyer. That famous group of lawyers says they never agreed to help him sue us and never will. They know the freak doesn’t have a case. The guy’s also been calling employees. He sends e-mails with half-veiled threats using words from dead languages like French and Latin. The owner’s ex-wife gets a three page letter from him. The boss doesn’t say what he wrote. We realize the guy blames the Stan the HR man for everything when Stan starts getting bizarre phone calls about an ad he never placed. A few phone calls and the ad is traced back to the freak. I’m sure he thought it was funny.
I’ve been working here for a decade. This company had an open door policy once; now we have to be buzzed in. The girls walk to their cars in pairs. The stalked damsel is still friendly, if more cautious. I overheard Brian say the guy brought an AK-47 here just to show it off. Brian was working here alone and man was he spooked. Who could blame him?
Today the company told us they are fighting back. The owner feels harassed and he is. He’s lost a lot money and time on this guy and so the boss is going to sue for harassment. I’m sure the guy will get the hint. I’m sure he’ll realize he’s lost and walk away…right?