Thursday, January 18, 2007
Your Teeth are All Red and There's a Little Bit About You I Don't Wanna Know
There is an art to corporate speech. People are not laid off. There are adjustments made. Leverages taken advantage of.
I used to have this job in which a woman sat kitty-corner from me. And it was only a couple days into her time with us that I knew for sure: she wasn't going to make it. It was unavoidable. She maintained a blissful ignorance of any performance standards or professionalism.
And yet . . . . years later, there is much I remember about this woman.
I used to have this job in which a woman sat kitty-corner from me. And it was only a couple days into her time with us that I knew for sure: she wasn't going to make it. It was unavoidable. She maintained a blissful ignorance of any performance standards or professionalism.
And yet . . . . years later, there is much I remember about this woman.
- She had to be well over 300 lbs, and she loved it. Loved it.
- She always had great food at her desk, and huge quantities of it: she could take down an entire large pizza, cheese bread, chicken wings and tub of custard in one shift. It was a treasure to watch such love for eating. Plus, she shared.
- She once told me: "I loooooove black women. I do. I just love black women. You see, I think it's because we keep everyone else going. We have this burden, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. We have to be the grown-ups and caretakers. I love that. I embrace it."
- She went crazy for the maintenance man's strong aftershave.
- She told me all about how she kicked her man out of the house "for good" because he didn't want to hear her talk about how her day went. I tried to ask why this was such a sticking point for her, and she was unapologetic: "You have to contribute to be with me, and if you can't even listen, I be DONE with you." He crawled back two days later, and - yes - she told me about the makeup sex.
- I listened to her slurp down shakes and french fries while on the phone with clients . . . . at the same time as she read a magazine and browsed on the Internet.
- She often told me: "I can really see myself here for a long time. I just want to succeed here so bad."
- One night, she told me how she caught a ride home with a third-shift worker who openly, graphically came on to her in his car outside her house. Eventually her boyfriend chased him off, and she didn't seem to hear me when I told her she should report the worker to management.
- Once, when the neighborhood pizza place made a mistake with her order, she declared that she would never order from them again, and said to me, "And that's a good chunk of their business!" I didn't disagree with her. A week later, I couldn't get her to explain to me why she was again ordering from them. "Oh, Will -- that was so long ago!. That's all over with now."
- Workers there were judged on statistics, and hers were awful. I sat down with her a couple times to explain to her what she needed to do to pull them up. She told me that I should be a manager because none of them ever sat down with her.
- One day I overheard her talking to her tub of custard; she said: "Oh THERE you are! I MISSED you!"
- She talked about how it was important to her that her kids behaved well in restaurants. She made it a point that she wanted people to respect her family in public.
