The Assistant

Have you ever found someone so complexly fascinating and so simplistically annoying at the same time? This seems to be the problem with the other assistant that I work with; lets call her "Jelly Bean" to protect her identity. Jelly Bean has Barney's and Saks on her speed dial. She wears Gucci sneakers to her private pilates class. She even emails me links to Jimmy Choo shoes she wants to order. These things I like.

Jelly Bean, it turns out, is one of those sour jelly beans, only she is inverted; first sweet, then sour. The problem is that as a person she is fun to talk to but as a co-worker I want to hole punch her tongue. The biggest annoyance is the fact that she is an outward stresser. She insists on telling me every single email that she has to read. Counting up as her outlook downloads her messages. "One hundred and eight, oh, now one hundred and seventy-five. Wait, two hundred and eighty. I'm never going to get through all this today, oh, jesus, I'm just not going to be able to get to anything else today." Sigh. "Spam is running now, oh good, only a hundred and ten now. But I still don't know how I will get through all these." Seriously? Seriously! You need to chill out, you get through what you can and then you keep going. Most of the email is personal shit anyways, file it away and read it on a rainy day. I can't handle when people force their stress on to me, I can't help you, stop trying to make me feel bad for you. What do you want me to say, "Oh, my god, I am so sorry that you actually have to do work for your paycheck, that is horrible."

If only it stopped there, I'd be fine. But oh, no, it keeps going. She also insists on checking up on my work. "Hey, have you ordered that stuff from office max yet?" Teeth grinding. "The girl who I order from is out sick, but I will call her at home and interrupt her viewing of the price is right so I can order some paper because we might run out since we only have 5000 sheets left and we print like 20 sheets a day." Oh my goodness, I will get to it, only now I will wait a little bit longer to do it now that I know that you are so antsy about it. Good grief, woman. I got it under control.

Oh, but it continues. She is one of those creatures that has over-populated the greater los angeles area, you know who I am talking about, the people who insist on telling you every minute detail of their lives but have no desire to know a single thing about yours. "I don't know what kind of flowers to have at my high school reunion, I thought of doing all white, but then I just didn't think that had enough, oomph." Really, that's interesting. Please tell me more.

And of course, how could I forget, the best part of my whole day, having to answer the phone to hear her husband on the other end for the fifteen time in five minutes. "Jelly Bean, please." Have you ever noticed that if someone asking for someone the exact same way over and over again can be exactly like Chinese water torture? Drop. Drop. Drop. Dear lord, what can he have to say he hasn't lived his life enough since the last call to have anything to add? "Oh, my goodness, another leaf just fell, thought I'd call you to tell you about it." Really? Get a hobby. People take way too many personal calls at work. I mean, really, what is so important all the time, "honey, I'm at the grocery store, do we get cold water tide or stain fighting tide?"

Anyways, I wish that was all that there was but everyday I discover a new nugget of co-worker gold that makes me want to smash my computer screen over my head. But it isn't Jelly Bean's fault that she is annoying, it is my fault for not knowing the correct way to administer voodoo.