Office Politics

Topic: Eurotrash


The run of bad luck continues.

Don't you just hate it when people walk into you, just assuming you'll get out of their way if they're bolshy enough? I try not to respond, but if they haven't mastered the art of walking in a world that contains other people yet, I draw the line at moving out of their way.

At a work lunch today, they not only reduced the size of the plates for their damn buffet (dirty trick! boo!), people would spend ages leaning over the cheese finger sarnies, choosing (oooh! cheese! or - ooh! wait a minute! other cheese!), and not letting me sidle past with my carefully constructed tower of cocktail sausages. So, in a damn mood, again, I decided I'd wait, but I'd not get out of their way, too, unless they asked politely. Passive aggressive, moi?

So the Head of Pointless Mumbling, on her third course already, decides to march up and into me aggressively, in the - vain - aspiration I'll step neatly out of the way of her superior firepower. Stupid old cow, her muzzle is drooping, and her ammunition is not what it once was. I'm not moving unless she speaks to me. What does she do? She shoves.
I can't believe a forty five year old woman has shoved me, throwing strawberries, cherry juice and cream all over me in the process. So she wouldn't have to say "excuse me".

I look down, at the spoon and dish still hanging from my white and pink pinstripe jeans, clinging on by cream stickiness alone. I don't speak. The Head of Pointless Mumbling begins to berate me. "It got caught in your scarf" she says, in lieu of an apology. I have a striped blue scarf tied at hip level. When I inspect it, there's a sticky red spoon now embedded in its folds. I know I'm tall, but for her to be carrying her dessert at hip height is ridiculous. She defensively asks for her spoon back.
I remove it and throw it onto the dinner table. Then sigh. The jeans are ruined.
In typical bitchy older woman style, she offers me a fresh spoon. "Don't worry about it," I say. (I so love the moral high ground, can't you tell?) The damage is done - anything else is just making the old cow feel better.
"No, here, you can use it to scrape the fruit off."

What is it with women in the generation above me, anyway? They've been like this since school. Competitive. Bitchy. Up themselves. As if someone's videoing them and counting the score. As if apologising for acting like a dickhead would lose them a weeks' bonus points.
I dunno what I've done to fuck her off, but I kind of suspect it's something along the lines of exist, be younger than her, not care too much about her obsession with her own authority, not pay obeisance.
Fuck this crap at work. I hate office politics.

I may have fruitshit all over my trousers, but I know how to make way for others and I know how to open my mouth and apologise when I fuck it up for people.

Footnote: I'm probably only really ranting because then I fell asleep in front of the England v Portugal match, and dreamt I was Nadia from BB, taking penalties. Don't even go there, there's nothing good or fruitful in those few moments of delirium.

Blo'te of the Day So Far: Stefan Geens
"Margaretha married Rolf, the man she broke up with Bengt for; they've had two children and lived in Luxembourg and Gothenburg before settling in Stockholm. It turns out that when I called, the children were under the impression their dad was her first love. But how many of us know the details of our parents' pre-marital love lives? I certainly don't, and it will stay that way unless somebody calls me with news of a long-lost love letter addressed to my mother from somebody patently not my father.
After I called and Margaretha saw the letter online, she looked for Bengt M? online, found him living in the area where they grew up and called him. He remembered her without prompting."