Self Centered
Oh, the irony of complaining about someone else’s “self-centered-ness” on a blog, the epitome of “self-centered-ness”, but I just gotta.
#3 has been whining about a flat screen (monitor) since before she even started working there. Now, she’s got one of those giant “teacher desks”. It’s gotta be 3 feet deep. She has it covered in “crap”. Her monitor is too “big”. You know the kind, it’s an older CRT type screen and from her chair she can’t reach the controls on the danged thing - that’s how far away it is on the corner of the desk. I have a similar screen on my workspace an 18″ deep desk. The monitor takes up 10% ~ 15% of the desktop space, it hangs over the front of the desk even though it’s pushed all the way back towards the wall. This is the desk to monitor ratio, monitor: huge, desk: tiny. I don’t have all the extra stuff on my work desk. The monitor on her primary work space is under 5% of the (physical) desktop. And she needs a flat screen monitor. The reason she needs a flat screen monitor is so she can put more crap on top of the desk.
When she first got there she spent a lot of time trying to win a radio contest to go on a cruise. The radio station limits their contestants to one entry. She got the names of her friends and coworkers to “qualify” them on the condition that they take her if they win. I was tempted to call the radio station to let them in on her fraud, but then found myself hoping that she would win.
She’s got one of those voices that is made for silent film - like a banshee being fed backwards through a wood chipper. It’s loud and shrill and when she gets flustered (quite easily with the radio) the voice goes up in volume and in pitch. She’s the reason the Cone of Silence was invented - so nothing gets out.
On Tuesday, our router (he handles all the regular routes and stops) was getting ready to go to a funeral out of state and he was telling me that I would need to change the backup tape for the server. After listening to him, I asked a few questions about the tape labeling and rotation to make sure that I was using the right tape for the right day. #3 was listening intently during the explanation, her lopsided grin making me feel like Simba as the hyenas circle in upon him, and remarked that it sounded really easy and that I was over-complicating matters. I looked directly at her and said, “no. I’m just trying to make sure I understand it and can tell when you mess with it.” She objected, like she would ever do something like that.
But here’s where she begins to get really obnoxious. Yesterday, I was having a conversation with some of our special needs employees. What I mean by that is we have a coordinator for special needs routes, drivers for those routes, and bus aides for those routes. During the conversation we were discussing a child’s medical condition; the fact that the child is prone to seizures and how to care for that child. Like the Saturday Night Live character who’s done everything bigger, better and more recently (claiming to have given birth to her own cat, for example) #3 jumps into the conversation and it’s all about her again.
Her daughter had a seizure once. Her and her then roommate revived her by “MacVyvering” a stethoscope that she just “happened” to have lying around and shoving the tube down her daughter’s throat to reopen her airway. She took her daughter to the hospital and the Dr. didn’t believe her. Oh, yeah? Well, neither do I…
On a mildly lighter note: just so no one thinks I’ve totally let this person get to me, I should let you know that from time to time I mention “flat screen” within earshot of her. Despite the fact that she claims to not listen to what’s going on around her (great for the radio, right?) she starts salivating like Pavlov’s dogs whenever I do.
flat screen…. flat screen……. rosebud - er I mean flat screeeeen…
