Mental as anything

I do believe I've encountered true insanity.

Our temporary secretary at work was finally given the boot yesterday after 3 months of progressively worsening and progressively more insane and irrational behaviour. I've mentioned her before, so check out Workplace stress if you want a bit of the background.

Things have become even worse over the last month or so after the arrival of a new colleague, who happens to be a librarian (fancy me having a librarian as a manager - she has short hair, piercings and comfortable shoes to prove it). Well, Katherine the temp, is American, Catholic and completely fucking insane, which is a terrible combination and not a good sign if you're looking for tolerance. There was a bit of a hoo-har one day last week; apparently Katherine came storming back into the office after an altercation with librarian colleague, mumbling on, and she came out with, "I know she can't help it if she's a LEZZZBIAN, but must she really flaunt it about so unashamedly?". Brilliant. Made me howl. On their own, people like Katherine are just a bit sad and amusing, although in her position, she does have the opportunity to spread quite a lot of poison.

Anyway, our real secretary finally returned yesterday and Katherine wasn't happy: she see the job as hers and hers alone; she sees the main boss as hers and hers alone, so for Ingrid to come back (despite Katherine's best efforts to put her off and undermine her) was a great affront to her.

Well, bloody hell, what a nightmare. Katherine was acting very much like somebody who’d had their nose put out of joint by Ingrid’s return and she was impossible from the moment Ingrid walked back through the door.

There was no speaking to her, she wouldn’t do anything, refused point-blank to go and join Ingrid in a handover discussion with our manager. She was behaving like a child. Another colleague pointed out that she’d said something about working in the boss's office to allow Ingrid to get back to her desk and she rounded her - went mental! I added something to effect that she was acting impossibly and she stormed off, slagging us off to anybody she came along.

Our manager (the librarian) was tearing her hair out and was quite upset and flabbergasted by it all so she decided to tell her to leave (the beauty of temps!). She handled it very well and told Katherine to gather her things and fuck off. And she just got her stuff and left. She accused one colleague of attacking her three times. And she’s going to take legal action against our manager (probably going to try and get her put away for having too many piercings, short hair and being gay). I wonder what she said about me? I really don’t give a flying fuck to tell you the truth.

Fucking deluded, paranoid, mental cow. And she's going to go off and tell the next people she works with just how awful we all are.

We spent most of the afternoon swapping stories of “Katherine’s Words of Wisdom” that she’d been giving to each of us individually – essentially trying to undermine us and play each of us off against each other. The common theme seemed to be that people shouldn’t try to be like me! I couldn’t agree with her more on that one.

And who said office work was boring?


Menthol as anything
My cat, Otto, likes eating menthol preparations like Vicks and Carmex.