« Blog Changes | Main | The Gambit »

The Conspiracy

There’s a scene in All the President’s Men where, and I’m going from memory here because it’s been several months since I’ve watched the movie and a few years since I’ve read the book, Deep Throat tells Woodward that he and Carl Bernstein are being bugged and to be careful what they say. Woodward immediately goes to Bernstein’s apartment, and when Bernstein opens the door with a jovial “hello!” Woodward silences him immediately by placing his index finger over his lips. He turns on a Vivaldi record and types the information he received from Deep Throat.

I always love it when my life turns into a movie, especially a ’70s conspiracy thriller, but reenacting that scene today was almost too much.

There’s a woman at work, Athena, who I’ve kinda been buddies with since we started. Not bestest, share-all-our-secrets buddies, but we share daily moments of friendly banter (which is more than I can say for most of these drones) and occasionally, when we can get away from the office, have lengthy bitch sessions about what a miserable fucking job we share. It’s cool. So she came up to me in my cubicle today, while I was working on closing out some invoices. I was listening to music, so I paused it and gave her a jovial “hello!” She silenced me immediately by placing her index finger over her lips. Unfortunately, I had neither a record player nor a Vivaldi record, and the computer is a poor substitute for the endless rattle of a typewriter, so she just stood there, about three inches away from my ear, whispering as quietly and monotonously as possible (in fact, she didn’t even take pauses for the commas and periods that I’ve added — it was just one steady, rambling stream):

“Andrea [my direct supervisor] is having Joanne [one of the new contractors, who happens to sit near my cubicle] spy on you when you leave your desk and come back, writing down when you come in late* and leave early and take long breaks, stuff like that, and she’s been reporting it to the Big Boss. I don’t know how long it’s been going on, I think only a week or two, but I thought I should tell you because I don’t want you to get fired. The Big Boss said she didn’t want to fire you, and she wouldn’t because she didn’t have anything concrete, but if you keep it up she probably will, so you really gotta straighten up because Now They’re Watching You.”

Je…sus…Christ. I’ve always been what many people — including myself — call “paranoid,” but as I’m often quick to point out: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean They’re not after you. But this kinda rattled me. After she told me, and just walked away as if nothing had happened (I acknowledged her with a stunned, wide-eyed nod, so she understood the message was received), I was literally shaking with fear and anger. I was so pissed — not about getting caught taking a lot of “personal time,” but about the way Andrea went about it, as well as her reasons for it** — that I considered giving my notice on the spot. I’ve had enough of this fucking shit-ass job, and the money’s nice, but I’m at a pathetic point where I don’t really need it — what little money I would spend over the months and possibly years searching for another job could come directly from the ever-increasing nest egg I’ve stockpiled so that I’ll have some “wiggle room” before I move out. The only thing I’d change from the equation, if I quit, is the “move out” part.

But then I decided if I quit, the terrorists would win, and I can’t have that. “Fuck her,” I thought, and then I hatched a rather simple scheme for revenge: she is, if you read the double-asterisked footnote, trying to “make an example of me” or something to mask the fact that the work she gave me was her responsibility to begin with. I enjoy the poetic justice in approaching the Big Boss as soon as I get in tomorrow morning, an hour or more before Andrea’s start time, and laying it all on the line: my unethical extended lunches and early quitting times; my awareness of the conspiracy against me and my side of the story, which will in large part damn me but will mostly take Andrea down further than I’ve ever gone; the fact that I’ve only had a few “catch-all” things to do for the past month, in large part because she (a) hoards her work like a maniac and (b) clamored and conned her way into too many temps, thus depriving me of said work because she’s doling it out to all of them to justify the necessity of all these extra people; and that I’ve done good work in the past, and will continue to do good work, as long as I have something to do. I’m guessing there’s something personal in there — I’ve been generally pleasant to her, but I really can’t stand her, and maybe she realizes it and doesn’t want to work with me. I can’t really figure out any other reason — work-related or otherwise — why she’d launch an offensive to get rid of me when we could, much more easily, get rid of a temp.

So if the Big Boss has a problem with any of this, I’ll put in my notice and leave without a fuss. Hopefully she’ll accept that over firing me, which reflects badly on both of us (or maybe just me…I’m gonna go ahead and hope “both of us”). I’m thinking, though, that while this is kind of a gamble, the end result will be “a semi-severe reprimand for Andrea, followed by the dismissal of a temp and an increase in work for me.” The only forseeable problems are my obsession with finding a better job (and if I do, I am soooo out of there, which might burn a few bridges with the Big Boss if she plans to get in my corner) and the consequences of admitting that I’ve essentially been a slacker. I’ve been hiding the information, rather than going to the Big Boss directly and immediately, because let’s face it: I’d much rather sit in my car reading a novel for three hours than sit in a cubicle slowly melting my corneas. I’d risk this shitty-ass job for the privilege of doing that, because I’m any Conspirer’s worst enemy: a Gambler. But, as it happens, I’m a Really Shitty Gambler who rarely thinks of consequences beyond my own immediate gratification. So I’m gonna go in and bluff, and I’ll either win, lose, or fold like a cheap card-table and leave in shameful silence.

Wish me luck!

*I make no bones about leaving early and taking long breaks, but I’m never more than five minutes late, and usually I’m there before Joanne. But whatever.

**Dateline: Late November 2005 — Andrea hands me a stack of work for our end-of-the-month close, but as usual, she didn’t sort through it carefully and handed me a bunch of crazy shit that I have no idea how to do and don’t know who to give it back to, so I handed it back to Andrea and told her the problems, and she…did nothing. Now, in mid-February, she sees all of this work in my computer “bin” (this, to me, is the equivalent of her coming into my cubicle and rooting around in my filing cabinets to dig up dirt) and demands to know why it hasn’t been done. I explained, in a polite but mildly condescending tone, that I gave her this work to do months ago, and if she intended to blame me for not getting it done, she’d better bark up a different tree. She took her frustration out on me, by forcing me to sit in her cubicle for four hours while she attempted to process two — of eight — invoices, showing me how to do both of them. I have no problem with learning new things, but she pretty much abandoned me shortly before I had to leave anyway, so I went home. The next day, she brushed past my cubicle on her way to, I assume, conspire with Joanne, and she asked, “Did you finish that stuff in your ‘bin’?”

“Um,” I replied, but she kept on going, somewhat unwilling to hear a negative answer. So I let it go. She has the hard copies; she can finish it. But I suspect my unwillingness to, uh, do work that I can’t feasibly do has…pissed her off, and she wants to take me down to prevent her from looking bad. I have no evidence to confirm that this is her reasoning, but the time-frame lines up and it’s really the only time she’s ever gotten pissy with me.

Posted by Stan on February 21, 2006 4:33 PM  | Permalink | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace | Digg It