Crazy Knows No Bounds

I usually have Monday's off, and this was the case this week, along with today. A part of me wished I had been at work though yesterday. As is common with our company we have a meeting twice a month, and always on a Sunday. These are mandatory meetings to attend. (Which is no hardship generally, usually we're all working on weekends anyway. On the rare occasion one of us is off the boss rotates this fairly well to make sure it isn't the same person having to come in on a day off for a 30-45 minute meeting.)

This past Sunday he was the one scheduled off. While he's not a stickler for timeliness when it comes to the Worthless Co-Worker he does insist on being on time for these mandatory meetings. He rants and raves at her every time she's late for a meeting to no avail. This Sunday was no exception.

Honestly they both drive me nuts when it comes to tardiness. Our time clock registers time in 15 minute increments. As an example, if you're scheduled to be at work at 9:30 am and you punch in at 9:37 am, it still registers as 9:30 am. One minute later, it would show 9:45 am. On normal workdays they both play this scheduling quirk to their advantage. It allows them to be 7 minutes late and punch out 7 minutes early and suffer no time loss. They also use it for lunch breaks as well. Timed right, their 30 minute lunch break can be 44 minutes long. In essence they're not on the clock for about 30 minutes a day, but still get paid as if they were. While this seems insignificant, it does add up in the long run.

(The point of the previous paragraph is to point out I'm a bit "old school" when it comes to my job. If I'm getting paid for 8 hours I'm actually on the job for that amount of time. Plus tardiness is a pet peeve of mine, whether work related or not.)

I've pointed out this inconsistency many times to him. He can't expect her to be on time for meetings and let her slide every other day. Along with that it's his example she follows as well, which he doesn't like to hear, but very true.

So Sunday.

I'm there 15 minutes early and so is he. (He adheres to being on time for meetings himself.) We're sitting there shooting the shit, waiting for the Worthless Co-Worker to show up. I wonder aloud how late she'll be and he's all over it. He's confident that as often as he chews her out about being on time for meetings this is the one she'll finally be on time for.

(I offered to wager $10.00 on it but he declined. I think he's been burned a little too often.)

So 10:00 am rolls around and no Worthless Co-Worker. 10:05 comes to pass and no Worthless Co-Worker. He's doing a slow burn. He took no solace in my comment about her tardiness being no skin off my back as I was scheduled to work all day anyway.

(I'm pretty sure I heard him "think", "Fuck you Just Plain Tired." No it wasn't said aloud, just a thought of his I caught clearly.)

Now it's getting close to crunch time, 10:07 am rolls around and I hear the sound of someone running down the mall. Naturally it's her. She's like some old bag lady or something. She has a purse, and generally two other canvas type bags on her when she comes to work. So she's burdened down with 3 bags in essence, a flapping coat, and running in high heels. It's a comical site to behold and one I don't get to see very often. Now the guys at the Verizon kiosk in front of our store see it often and look forward to this daily dash when she's scheduled to open the store.

So she gets punched in, with seconds to spare as far as the quirky time clock is concerned. The boss is staring her down with a mean, stern, and "bossly" like look. Utter. Fail. Once she's punched in she heads to the back room to dispose of all the crap she carries in with her and her coat.

I then calmly state that "it looks like we'll get this meeting started in about 10 minutes." The boss turns his mean look upon me, as I'm smiling at him, and states quite clearly that that wasn't going to happen. I just smiled and waited. He did that slow, but ineffective burn. (And I have to admit he was right. While I didn't actually time her I think she made it out of the back room in 9 minutes. She had to finish putting on her makeup, a daily ritual for her that never gets completely done at home.)

During this time frame he mutters to me he's going to have it out with her, tomorrow though. He didn't want me present because it just isn't right to chew out an employee in front of another employee. Which I happen to agree with. But I also know that's not the real reason. He knows I'd be grinning the whole time, if not actually laughing at the two of them. So she's to get chewed out on Monday, my day off.

My small desire to actually have been at work yesterday has nothing to do with her getting chewed out though. His meaningless and ineffective rants at her mean nothing to me. I missed something else though.

(And yeah, I know you people just read a bunch of paragraphs already and we haven't even hit the crux of the story yet. But every good story needs to be properly set up. So buckle in and read some more. We're almost done, honest.)

She took the wind out of his sail.

I get a phone call yesterday afternoon from work and it's the boss. (I actually ended up getting two calls from work, but the second one will be shared tomorrow, or Thursday. This post is long enough as it is.)

She turned in her resignation. She did actually give one month's notice though. Apparently her last day is going to be November, 27th. After ascertaining he wasn't joking, I wasn't too surprised. I had her pegged as quitting by the end of the year anyway, and without a notice. I was one month off is all.

The reason she's quitting? She's getting married, to the guy I posted about here. (Seriously, for anyone who isn't up to date with her craziness I recommend reading it. This post is long enough without repeating excerpts of that post.)

So she has a guy she's never met in person coming up here for Thanksgiving and two weeks later they're leaving for Israel to get married. They're going to investigate the Jewish faith and if that appeals to them he's going to become a Rabbi, and she's going to be a Rabbi's wife apparently. This is such a well thought out plan.

While I won't really miss her, the blog will. She's been a great source of blogging material for me. I can only hope the boss finds a suitable replacement for her. He is adept at finding less than stellar people, but I don't think he can top this one. But it won't hurt for me to express this desire to him.

Teaser Alert: Oh, that second phone call I mentioned earlier? It was from her last night and it was, without a doubt, the most amazing conversation I've had with her to date. And yes, I'm going to share it. Settle down folks, and have a little patience, and stuff. Wasn't this a long enough read anyway?