This really bugs me because I love her and I don�t really know what to do about it. She�s like my closest friend at work and she�s a total sweetheart. And also, I did nothing wrong, really�Well�I kinda did, I guess.

Here�s what happened:

I yelled at Leigh on Tuesday. Leigh is a salesman at work and drives me batty. I know I�ve mentioned him before. First of all, he�s a perv who grosses me out to no end with his salacious grins and drooling. More importantly, he doesn�t do his job well.

Credit Departments have to work closely with Sales Departments. Customers have to have credit lines in order to be able to order stuff, ya dig? Anyway, Da Man decided when I first started here that I would work on most of Leigh�s accounts. My assumption is that Da Man was trying to drive me slowly insane so that I would have to quit, eventually.

So after going on two long years of coddling the ever-inept Leigh; of doing extra work to make up for his numerous mistakes; of putting up with his continually talking to my breasts, I lost it.

As a favor to him, I agreed to allow a certain customer to place some orders on a charge card in late-May/early-June. This was a favor because we weren�t even shipping to the customer at the time, due to various issues (you know, such as they weren�t paying the bills they already had so we didn�t want to accumulate more of them). It was also a favor because had I not done this, Leigh would not have made his sales goals for May and he is already on thin ice in that area.

In our office, sales people process the credit card charges. They write on the slips where the money is to be posted and Alanna posts as instructed. Big surprise - Leigh fucked up. He messed up their charges and their Accounting Dept. now could not reconcile the charges with the invoices we were to have paid with them.

I have been swamped at work, people. Not only am I just plain busy, but Rob has been out of the office because of his chemo which translates into extra work for me. On top of that, our office has been infected with West Nile Virus or Tuberculosis or something, and people are dropping like flies. That said, I gave this customer what info. I could about the transactions, without having to go and pull Leigh�s paperwork. As my efforts did not solve her problem, I turned it over to Leigh on Thursday, June 19, and asked that he pull the credit card receipts and reconcile them. If Alanna had made a mistake in posting the money (which I was almost certain she had not), I asked that he show me. If it was his error, he needed to correct it. I explained to him that I needed him to take care of it because I simply did not have the time to find his mistake for him.

Was any work done by Tuesday of this week? Of fucking course not. And in the mean time, the customer wouldn�t pay their outstanding invoices until they had their answers and had threatened to contest the charges.

So I called up Leigh to ask why I hadn�t heard anything after these four days. He explained that he didn�t feel he should have to do the research.

I yelled at him. And I mean I yelled. I don�t think I have ever yelled at another employee in my life before. I�ve been stern before; I�ve been cranky. I freakin� tore Leigh a new one. Everyone in my department heard me, I�m sure.

This story could be longer, but let�s just end this portion of it by saying that I ended up (with the help of the Little Big Man) researching the problem and resolving it anyway (by crediting their American Express card a whopping $19.73).

I was not happy about it, though. And later when he tried in his disgusting way to make up to me, I glared at him and said �Don�t come near me. And the next time I fuck something up, you can spend half of your morning researching it� and I haven�t spoken to him, since. I suppose I will have to, eventually�

I know me and I am somewhat certain that this will blow over because I don�t hold grudges (plus, if I can�t work with him our customers will end up paying the price and that�s not fair to them). Frankly, sometimes this trait of mine pisses me off because some people deserve to have grudges held against them, ya know?

Anyway, later that day I had to look for something in our file room. Now, suffice it to say that some people around here seem to feel no need to re-file things properly after they pull stuff out of our file room. I�ve been round and about this problem numerous times in the past, to no avail. Therefore, what I was looking for was not to be found where it was supposed to be. After the morning I had, I was in no mood for this nonsense. I was talking to Alanna about it and, even though I knew it wasn�t she who messed up the files (because she�s even more anal-retentive than I am, believe it or not), she was just kind of in the line of fire. I said I knew it wasn�t her and I was just pissed because this happens all the time and how freakin� lazy can people be, but�well, you know how it is when someone is just pissed and you�re standing in front of them.

So for the last couple of days, Alanna just hasn�t been herself. Normally, we chat about life, her kids, her hubby, the news�stuff. She�s not said more than a few words to me over the past two days. I apologized on Tuesday for being in such a pissy mood and tried to explain; I�ve also been acting like my usual sweet self ever since. Apparently this is not enough to make things nice again.

The Little Big Man has told me several times that I really have to watch how I show my moods to people. He says that my personality is so strong that if I am in a bad mood I bring everybody else down whereas when I am in a good mood the whole department is up and cheery, generally speaking.

A. I know he�s right. I�ve noticed.

B. He is now my second boss who has told me this very thing.

C. THIS IS JUST WAY TOO MUCH PRESSURE!!!! What, I can�t have a bad day like every other normal person on the planet without some huge and dire consequences???

Of course, I may just be self-absorbed and her seeming blueness has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

~~~

OK, somebody in my department (Liddy) just found out that Oprah�s book club is reading East of Eden right now and asked if it was the East of Eden written by Anne Rice under her pseudonym (you know, her terribly written �erotic fiction�).

Stuff like this makes me feel very smug and superior.

I�m just kidding, but it did make me giggle to myself after she left my office. Well, plus of course I immediately e-mailed all of my friends and mocked her, like the really bad person I am.

~~~

I see this man in the park feeding pigeons as I drive to work every morning. However, he is never simply sitting on a bench, feeding them by dropping seed on to the ground. Those birds are all over him � on his head, his arms, eating out of his hands�If didn�t know better, I�d swear there was something off-color going on there.

He�s like the male-equivalent of that �Feed the Birds� lady from Mary Poppins.

~~~

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