What Now

I feel that I need to explain myself about something I've mentioned here before. I talk a lot about how one of my co-workers vexes me, and I'm afraid that it has cast me in a rather hateful light. Before any of you think I've permanently moved to PsychoHoseBeastville, I'd like to further explain myself to help you understand.

Maybe I'm being vain, but I like to think of myself as a nice person. Maybe nicer than most due to my excellent upbringing and my mother and father's advice to treat people the same way I would like to be treated. I am also an independant person who doesn't need steady streams of company to be happy. Meaning, I suppose I should elaborate, that even though I love talking to friends and being with other people, I don't need someone shoved right up my nose 24 hours a day to be happy. I am perfectly comfortable doing my own thing and entertaining myself. I have always been that way, according to my mother at least. I think it came from growing up with a severly handicapped brother who needed so much attention and a sister who my parents spent a lot of time...advising. But I digress...

My job doesn't require me to interact with people constantly and, after years of customer service based jobs, that is a blessing. One of the things I like most about my job is that I am left to my own devices and trusted to do whatever work needs to be done. When I began this job, I worked with four other people who did their own thing as well, and even though we got together and talked or joked around, eventually we all just went back to doing our own thing.

Enter the new girl. I want to make it very clear that I don't hate this person. In fact, I don't even dislike her. She's very young and sweet and she's very smart. My problem with her stems from the fact that she has no idea how to occupy herself when her task at hand is done. No matter what I'm doing, she will walk into my office and talk to me and she Won't. Go. Away. It would be one thing if she came in and talked for a few minutes and then went back to her office, but that isn't how she rolls. She has literally come into my office and talked for an hour about her daughters bowel movements. Seriously, people! I can be working, I can be on my lunch break, I can be trying to build a display and elbow deep in glue and plastic, and she'll just stand there and talk about herself until she can think of some reason to go back to work. She will come in and take things off of my desk and play with them, she has moved my furniture around, and my least favorite thing is that she will come in and walk behind my desk and either stare at what I'm doing or try and read what I'm typing! I had to tell her once to go away because she was making me nervous and I NEVER do stuff like that. She invades my personal space constantly and I'm very picky about who I let in my personal space. She has also begun bringing her finace into my office when he comes to lunch with her, and they both just hang out and mess around with things in my office. I have taken to wearing my iPod plugged into my ears all of the time in the hopes that she will see I'm otherwise engaged and not bother me, but that doesn't work either. She just walks in and starts talking! She's even sat in my office when I get phone calls and then wants to know who I was talking to.

I am VEXED! My brain tells me to just listen to her and laught at the appropriate times, but my heart tells me to pick her up and throw her off if the roof! Some people you can be honest with and just tell them to leave you alone, as I would want people to do if they felt that way about me, but she isn't one of those people. I've even told her flat out to leave me alone, but she doesn't seem to get that I'm serious. It makes me feel sick to my stomach to treat someone like that, but I'm being driven to dire straits. I suppose I'm telling you all of this because I don't want any of you to think I'm a mean person. I don't know why I should care what you think, really, but I don't want anyone to think that I feel the way I do out of sheer undeserved hatefulness. I try and be nice to everyone if I can (some exceptions apply depending on the situation, of course) but this has gotten bad for me. I'm beginning to think that Job himself would have already beaten her to death with his sandle.

So there you go. I just wanted everyone to understand where I was coming from in case I mention her again.

Whew.