Sybil is completely obsessed with my boss. I don't know, maybe "obsessed" isn't the right word. Maybe she has some serious issues revolving around routine... All I know is, when he's not at work, the whole office is at risk for not only a potential form of gross torture, but, at the very least, a day of eye glowering and excessive moodiness. Any conversation with a co-worker that does not involve her, but can still be heard as some form of conversing sets forth a system of hers that I like to simply call: Tantrum. (Sybil's Tantrum = the throwing of pens, slamming of notebooks, kicking of chairs and/or garbage cans, pounding on her desk, and more scary, glary eyes).
Today, my bossman called out "Sick" with a very serious family emergency. My boss... o man, I could dedicate a whole blog to his worthlessness, but I'm going to wisely save that for the day of my departure out of this realm of Corporate USA.
My bossman is usually an hour late everyday. This does NOT give ME the right to be an hour late everyday... and the one time I mentioned to him that we start at 8am daily, he got all RuPaul and told me that I was more than welcome to stay with him til 7 every night. I naturally laughed and said, "I don't have to stay until 7, I'm here at 8." (This made things uncomfortable for a couple days because he is wildly feminine and petty sometimes, and his feelings got all hurt, and I was insubordinate or something). So, I never brought it up again.
Though, when 9am rolls around... then 9:30, I started to get a little antsy because hopefully this meant he was working from home today (another thing I am not allowed the right to do... but ok). And bazzzzziiiiing, there it was. He logged on to email from home and was looking great to his bosses for actually being out of the office and contributing to nothing in particular but a green IM light that was lit to signify his presence on our network. I am amused because as his second-in-command (i.e. glorified secretary), I have heard nothing from him about not coming in, but that's not unusual. That's just bossman being the inconsiderate jer-, I mean, being the busy, driven worker he is... (insert cheesy smile and thumbs up here).
Anyway... so bossman decides he must go with his wife to save his daughter from a very serious disease called "fever" and get her some emergency care for "sore throat" and he absolutely had to be there with his wife because of this thing doctors are still mystified about (we know little of it, but the government code word for it at the Pentagon is "coughing"). We are currently holding prayer groups and lighting candles with bossman's picture held high as a shrine in the air because he has the hardest luck ever when it comes to his daughter's health. Common cold should never happen to anyone, and we currently taking up a collection. I hear the Make A Wish Foundation is also stepping in.
This does not instill the love of boss in Sybil's eyes, however. This installs a panic that makes the rest of us sit uneasy, quietly tip-toeing around, and whispering so not to upset any kind of land mine she has deep in that brain of hers. The first symptom of her crazy is the conversing with herself. Whenever bossman is absent, they appear, and they communicate, loudly, through only one channel: her voice. My favorite part of this is when she shakes her head, and she's going off on one of them in there. She goes all Sherquita sans snapping of the fingers (and darn for that, I would LOVE that even more).
Everyday, she usually stalks his office, standing up and looking over the cubes with her creepy eyes at every sound coming from the direction of his office. The later he gets everyday, the less fluid her body motions become. She is noticeably off kilter and nervous. She goes into the beginning stages of tantrum, and while, again, it's scary to know the apocalypse is probably coming from her, we all can't help but be amused at the talking to herself in an almost ghetto tone.
After bossman lets us know that his daughter is terribly, terribly ill with the acute viral rhinopharyngitis (for God's sake, google it) Sybil then starts firing of instant messages to the team to "slyly" ask for information. "Have you talked to him directly?!" Even if I have, I always leave my responses to her very one dimensional and vague. Yes, ok, I am mean for that, but sheesh... why is it my fault that I'm exposed daily to someone who is obviously on the edge of a breakdown at any glitch in her matrix??? I don't look at it as if I'm egging on the emotional distress, but more of a "making her stronger" exercise. After, this, the atmosphere in the whole building changes as we now can call in a priest to give us our last rites - the end is near.
She continues to talk to herself, but she wants nothing to do with any of us real people. Any questions to her are answered with snappy responses of "Yes" "No" or "I don't know" (which all interpret to "I'm gonna eat your brains"). She also begins the tantrum process times 200 in the slamming of things on her desk. Today, she even banged her fist on her desk as icy fear ran through my spine... she was losing it for real, yo.
Any polite questions to her are simply ignored (I once, once asked her if she was ok...). You can always tell when Sybil skips her medication for a few days, but the days bossman is obviously absent, it doesn't matter what kind of tranquilizer she has pumping through her blood... we are all on our way to becoming mere statistics on the local news.
As the day winds down, and we are all notified that bossman will be out for the rest of the day (said with one of his patented catch phrases that sucks butt: "out for the balance of the afternoon"), Sybil seems to withdraw into her world of blackness. Her eyes remind me of that of that season of True Blood when everyone was under a spell of a witch... We know the day means nothing to her now without the love of her life (Note: there is a back story to insert here... and trust me, there is one, but not now...). Sybil aimlessly walks through the building with her stretchy pants on (with knitted flamingos decorating the legs geriatric style), not making eye contact with anyone, sadly sighing at her desk, wishing for her love to come crashing through the door like an REO Speedwagon song...
Meanwhile, I enjoy the peace and quiet with unease as we all avoid eye contact with her. Well, it's all peace and quiet like until I actually talk to a co-worker about, you know, work. Then the slamming, clicking, feet stomping begins... Though, today, I kinda lost my cool... she started slamming her crap around on her desk like it was her pen's fault he decided to call in, and I couldn't help it. I picked up my notebook and began to repeatedly bang it on my desk. Louder and louder, just banging it on the desk until some of my papers actually fell off the wall from the high velocity winds. The harder I slammed, the better I felt...
Until I realized, that if I wasn't before... I probably moved myself up to first on her list...
bummer.
