What Does this Bitch Want?

What does this bitch want?

You know, if that is your first thought when somebody approaches you at work, it is probably time to get a new job.

It was what I thought when the fat HR chick approached me with "that" smile on her face. "That" smile that told me that she wanted something. (Oh yes, as HR chicks do, pass it on, just keep passing it on)

I reached for my mouse and clicked on Seek. The mouse, the modern day equivalent of the ruby slipper. Click your mouse and say three times. "Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here."

Poof! Whooshed up into the sky. Whirling around and around and around until I land somewhere new and exciting, where that is nobody knows.

I opened one eye. Nothing. Fatty HR Person was still barrelling towards me. Doh!

I looked up and smiled. Yes, bitch? "Hi. How are you?" Smile. The smile wasn't even forced. Said the spider to the fly. I have been doing this long enough to know how to smile sincerely as I plot someone's death

Figuratively speaking, of course. I don’t really want to kill her. Well, you get caught, don’t you. Life in prison. I hear prison isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I mean, being Maddog's bitch for the rest of my life? No. Not worth it, I think, as Fat Carla approaches me.

“You got a minute.” Those dreaded four words from an HR professional, enough to make the most hardened amongst us quiver.

Depends whose asking, apparently, isn’t the answer. You can get sent to HR for that. Ha ha. “Yeah, sure.”

“I need those figures…” I put the gun up to my shoulder, looked through the eye piece, lined it up with her left eye and squeezed the trigger. And her head exploded all over the white wall behind her…

“Today, if possible,” she said.

“Ah… sure.” What the hell 'figures' is she talking about? I thought.

“Are they ready now?”

“Ah? Just remind me.”

“Remind you?”

“Yes, if you can.”

“The remuneration budget.”

“The remuneration budget?”

“Oh, Jesus, so they are nowhere near ready, are they?”

“You asked me for these when?”

“In our meeting?”

“Our meeting?”

“Oh, you have to be kidding,” said Carla. “Why is it always like this with you?”

“Um, we never had a meeting.”

“Phone meeting.” Carla rolled her eyes.

“We never had a meeting, phone, or otherwise?”

“Jacob, I am really disappointed with…”

“I’m not Jacob.”

“What?”

“I’m not Jacob.” If I told you I was suddenly loving this, you had better believe me.

Carla pulled her head back at the neck, tucking her chin in, and widening her eyes, wider than I thought possible, you know, pulling her mouth into such a position of someone who had just crapped their pants. I could see her feeling it running down the backs of her thighs for the first time.

I didn’t say anything. I was just enjoying the criminally uptight and the perennially incompetent being caught being criminally uptight and the perennially incompetent.

I could feel my eyes narrow in anticipation of her response.

“You’re… not…”

“No.” That was possibly the most satisfying 'no' I have ever uttered.

“Jacob?” 

Watching her squirm came in a close second in the delightful stakes to the previous 'no'.

Here was a, senior, HR professional who didn’t know who the staff were. And I was pretty sure knowing who the staff were was really a minimum requirement of senior HR professionals. They were all ‘professionals’ now, not directors, not managers, all professionals, they thought that made them more accessible to the staff, whatever that means.

I felt my head shake. “No.”

I would have thought knowing who the staff were would make them more accessible than any title they care to use. But what would I know… Carla. I was smiling, I could feel it in my face.

Was she going to ask me if I was sure I wasn’t Jacob. Oh, please, ask me that, I thought, behind my smile.