An Insane Coworker

I made an attempt -- I think it was at the beginning of summer last year -- to post once a week, no matter how inane, about something that had transpired at work. Probably half-a-dozen posts were made before I threw in the towel.

I stopped writing in the evenings. The three-hour daily commute, which I had been dealing with since the relocation of our office on April Fool's Day, finally caught up with me in July.

But I want to get back to writing a little about what happens at work. I think it is important. For those of us who still have jobs, work is where we spend the majority of our productive time. And when we are not at work, we are usually 1) preparing for work or 2) recovering from work. I find there is usually only one day a week where I am outside work's shadow and that is some portion of Saturday. Basically, work is where we go for our dreams to die.

What has been roiling the psychic waters at work the last several months is a divisiveness spawned by a coworker's insanity.

It must have been early autumn when she went off the rails. I was helping her proofread the newsletter when she suddenly became hostile, not in a way that was directly confrontational (that would come later); more in the style of a passive-aggressive, slow burn stare-down.

She had played this game before, which I chose to ignore, returning her black moodiness with jovial solicitousness. But this time it dawned on me that her mental hygiene was lacking and that, since I was not married to her, I had no desire to keep trying to please her. So I returned her baleful silence with silence of my own.

This went on for a couple of weeks, during which time I attempted to break the ice. There were a few days where I glimpsed the potential of a thaw, but by the end of fall it was pretty obvious the freeze was permanent. Then, following the holidays, she started to make active mischief, tattling to the office manager about a sarcastic conservation I had with another coworker about how fulfilling and wonderful it was to come to work everyday. My coworker was called into the supervisor's office and scolded; for some reason I was not, possibly because it was feared that I would have a ready retort, namely, "We all -- you yourself do -- engage in 'gallows humor.' That's how we get by."

The coworker, a hardworking young woman, who had been reprimanded quickly figured out who the rat in the house was. This expanded the frost in the secretarial bullpen.

Not too long ago, a couple weeks now, the cold war went briefly hot when the insane coworker belligerently lit into me for providing some information, which turned out to be incorrect due to the failure of another coworker in updating the office Outlook calendar, to someone who called in looking for information on a meeting. The problem was caught before a mistake was made and the guy was given the right info, but the insane coworker went off nonetheless.

"Don't you take one of my calls again!"

"You weren't at your desk."

"That's what voice mail is for!"

It was unprofessional. And though I was pissed off and made a desultory attempt to defend myself, I basically rolled over at took it up the ass. I didn't tattle or complain. I just took it. What I have learned from many decades of working with others is that the wisest course is the one where you don't pass along the negative energy. You stay positive and focus on the work, the task at hand. And while dealing with a coworker who has maturity (she is nearing retirement) and mental-health issues is a challenge, it doesn't change the fundamentals -- stay positive, remember the work.

We'll see how it goes. Anyway, that is the work story for this week. I'll try to be more disciplined about making sure it is a regular post.