Molasses, emphasis on the beeotch

As we rise to meet the hump in the middle of the workweek today, we also aim to complete the tale of Doris. I make no promises of course, because I thought this thing would be wrapped up on Monday. But no, she was ridiculous enough that she can not be confined to one or even two days.



I've got two more stories before I get to the real heart of the matter. First, we'd have monthly potluck lunch parties in the office. Usually they'd be for "all of the January birthdays," for example, but sometimes just for fun. The first time we were having one of these after I started working there, a sign-up sheet started going around for people to write down what they were bringing. Being a recent college grad with no discernible cooking skills, I put my name next to one of the blanks for "Chips and Dips." I passed the sheet over to Doris, and she studied it for a minute before saying, "Mmm hmm, I'm gonna make That Damn Crab." I learned that day that Doris always brought the same thing to these parties: a dish she called That Damn Crab. She explained it to me, and I had to stop myself from making faces. She made a big pyramid out of cream cheese, covered every inch with imitation crab, then dumped a bottle of hot sauce over the top of it. Ta-dah! I only like one of those three things (hot sauce), so I stayed the hell away from it. Every month that followed, I was treated to the sights and smells of That Damn Crab, and it never got easier. Some people liked it I guess, because it kept disappearing. It just looked so hideous that I had zero desire to try it out and see if it was actually any good.


The second story took place about a year and a half after I started. We were concluding our weekly staff meeting, and the dean asked if there was anything else before we adjourned. Slowly and mega-methodically, Doris said, "There is an announcement that I would like to make. I will be retiring from Letters and Science in May." After a beat of silence, Twilight said, "It's May right now," maybe a tad too eagerly. "Oh no, next May," Doris said smiling. The general consensus was, "Oh, ok, thanks for telling us." I realize that she had been there for 30 years, but seriously, who does that? A year in advance? I can see a teacher or professor doing that so the following year's classes can be scheduled, but all this did was set everyone up for an entire year of "this is my last _____" statements. Those got old realllllly quickly.



The funniest part about her early announcement was that by the time she got around to retiring, Twilight was in grad school in New York and I was working for another office on campus. They had a going away party for her, but I was somehow left off the invite list. It's too bad too, because I know what I would've said in a speech: "Hi everyone, I'm Peter and I sat next to the retiree for two years at Letters and Science. For the first six months, I actually thought there were two people named Doris at the office. Every day, I kept hearing, 'Oh hold on Doris,' 'What's that, Doris?' and 'Ooh watch out, Doris.'" It would've been roast-like without being outright mean-spirited.



Despite all of the annoyances I've mentioned so far, I haven't gotten to the thing that pissed me off the most about working with Doris. She was threatened by how easily things came to both me and Twilight, and our efficiency with those new-fangled computers made her feel like a dinosaur. (I could say "something like an Assosaurus," but that would be out of line.) This fear manifested itself in an unfortunate way. Our mutual boss at the time was simultaneously very good friends with Doris and very bad at knowing how to supervise people. Her only insight as to how we were doing in our jobs was from her conversations with Doris - not observing us, asking us how things were going, or having any kind of interaction past "Good morning" with us. That's the crux of this whole thing, gentle readers. Since Doris didn't like how we worked, my boss thought I was doing a poor job. In actuality, I must say that I was doing a very good job and received tons of positive feedback from those who actually observed and knew what the hell was going on.



Just by going off of what Doris told her, it sounded like Twilight and I chatted with each other all day while purposely interrupting other people's attempts to get work done. "It's been reported to me that you and Twilight are distracting to others out there," my supervisor once told me. "Why doesn't Doris just talk to me if she has an issue?" I asked. "Oh no, it's not just Doris," she replied. Smell that, folks? You guessed it: bullshit. The fact that Twilight and I each did at least three times the work that Doris did was irrelevant; Doris couldn't concentrate with how easily the job came to us, and for that we needed to be reprimanded.



It got worse. Our normal probation periods of six months were extended by an additional three. That really angered me, because I knew I was doing a good job. So I pushed my nonconfrontational nature to the side and asked my boss for more information. She told me that my "youthful demeanor" made it difficult for others to concentrate. That wasn't good enough for me. Here's how that conversation went:



Me: "Youthful demeanor?" Can you give me anything concrete to work on?
Her: Well, geez, it's just your...your youthful demeanor.
Me: Is it the way I dress? Because Doris wears sweatpants every day, if you haven't noticed.
Her: No, it's not that.
Me: Is it my language? I try to avoid being too casual with the students but if that's the problem-
Her: No, your language is fine.
Me: Can you give me anything specific whatsoever? I do my job and I do it well, so I'm frustrated to have something in my file telling me otherwise without anything concrete to go off of.
Her: It's really just your youthful demeanor.
Me: (finally beginning to lose it) I'm young! I can't change that any more than I already am. I'll continue to work on that every day by virtue of aging, but if that's all there is, then I find this extremely unfair.

That wasn't all there was, and the other things pissed me off just as much. Apparently someone whose name rhymed with Boris thought that I "roamed aimlessly about the office." I remember vehemently stating, "I am not a buffalo," and adding that if anyone had ever asked me why I was away from my desk, they'd find a very real and very logical answer. But no one asked, so I must be grazing or something.

On the bright side, at least my letter wasn't like Twilight's, which basically called her a whore for wearing something too low cut once. We both got out of that situation as quickly as we could and moved on to bigger and better things. Neither of us would've survived that ordeal without the other there (especially since Twilight's roommate eventually banned her from talking about Doris). If you can't tell, it still pisses me off that Doris would use her friendship (coupled with her friend's nonexistent supervisory skills) to discredit the good work we were doing to help students. I can handle people having oddities - hell, I live with myself just fine - but someone like Doris purposely messing with my occupation was on a whole different level. We must have really scared her by being fast-moving, intelligent-sounding, non-That-Damn-Crab-eating, computer-literate, normal-assed people. Mmm hmm, that's right Peter, you don't need to take that shit anymore. Ooh oh, hold on now Peter, calm down now.

See you tomorrow, folks.