Worrkkknnngggggrrrrrrlllzzz

A shout out to the new-ish project wallah who sits next to me.

Whatever has caused her to hack, aherm, cough, and otherwise try to clear nastiness out of her throat has migrated over the cubicle walls and infect not just Yentl (to which I say hurrah, if it shuts her up for one minute) and your faithful correspondent.

I don't know what code name to give to this woman.

I have to say, there's something in me that immediately feels sorry for her. Her first day of work, she showed up wearing something that must have been pushed to the back of her closet in 1985 - a dirndle-y skirt and a jacket so big and boxy she could have had a couple of her woodland friends in it. And shoes with slightly pointed but definitely 80s toes and an ungraceful heel.

Her skin looked like she had been given free access to a tanning bed. It was actually kind of shocking, how tan she was. Although I've worked at companies where tanning was not just a regularly scheduled activity but an obsession, at Unnamed Co., it isn't. In fact, because we are Book People, we are expected to be pale and a little doughy. Personally, I excel at this.

She has really big 80s hair, tragically over-processed. It's bad, really bad. The woman needs a chat with Herschel.

Projecting my problems/life on her, I thought, here's a woman who's been poor for a very long time. And immediately cut her slack, except for the winter white outfit, which was wrong in so many ways.

One day she came in wearing all winter white, including her shoes. Although I dress, um, casually, I'm like every hetero woman - I know what works and what doesn't. This didn't work. At all. In fact, the whole premise of "Maid in Manhattan" (surprisingly charming movie) is a winter-white Dolce & Gabana outfit J-Lo the maid 'borrows'. On J-Lo it works. On this woman, it doesn't. At all.

Sadly, Unnamed Co has proven itself to be a hotbed of malicious gossip. God only knows what was said about me when I first got there.

Stoner Boy, a contractor now gone, came up to me and said, "She smells. She smells like my grandma's curtains."

To which I replied, "Do you actually go around sniffing your grandmother's curtains?"

I found myself in Stoner Boy's office with Belladonna and a few other choice individuals. Stoner Boy closed the door. "Have you seen the way she walks?" Belladonna asked, "And what's with that hair?" It got pretty catty in there and finally I said, "Guys, c'mon. Be nice. She's new."

Well, that was met with guffaws. Since Stoner Boy was leaving that day and Belladonna will be here as long as her beauty holds out (which I'm guessing could easily be another 20 - 30 years), she will be at Unnamed Co. I drew Belladonna aside.

"Look," I said,"I really don't know anything personal about her." Nor do I want to. About anyone at work, actually. "I have a feeling she's had a really hard life. She's doing the best she can. I think this isn't easy for her."

Girl Wonder had come to me at least three times to bitch about how little the new project wallah seems to know. "She doesn't know Office! She doesn't know how to use Outlook! She asked me the other day how to put columns into Word! Jesus Christ, was does she know?"

My reply was that maybe she came from a an old-fashioned shop where they were using UNIX with no GUI and the poor woman had to do all of her word processing in (oh, I forget what it is...I hated it so much, I tried not to remember it) .trf (?). This cut not ice with Girl Wonder.

"And the way she walks!"

"Knock it off," I said, going back to whatever I was doing. Ironic. Girl Wonder is usually the industrious one.

And I realized the boxy clothes and weird big jackets are to disguise whatever it is I suspect is wrong with her hip. She walks bent forward, like a worried old man. Could be arthritis. Could be an injury. Whatever it is, I suspect it's here to stay.

Belladonna and Girl Wonder probably are exasperated at my goody-goodyness. But it has just dawned on me that my mother's shattered hip caused her to walk in a similar fashion.

So knock it off with the new kid and let her try to settle in. Although I wish she hadn't come to work when she was sick.