Shit, Meet Fan

Sigh. It's been a long day at the office. Just before I got there, apparently, crappy management met poopy worker, and well, shit hit the fan. The stinky hippy I've been bitching about for months now got a good chewing out by Director/Buddy, who isn't exactly the most tactful or subtle manager in the world, granted. It all started over a bag of trash that Stinky Girl was supposed to have taken out. Ordinarily, it would've miffed D/B, but given the problems we've had with Faux Hippy, it was basically the straw that broke the camel's back. Instead of weathering the minor tirade (which normally goes away after about 5 minutes), Stinky Hippy stormed out of the office.

Now, where she expected to go, considering we're in the middle of the county on a country road and she has no damn car--still!!--was beyond me. But one of our other grant funded employees happened to be coming into the office at that exact moment and basically swooped her away Batmobile style. Said Normally Smart Woman later sent a text saying she wouldn't be in for the rest of the day. WTF? She didn't witness the incident, so I'm not exactly sure what happened unless her mothering instinct kicked in. Considering I'm pretty sure she played a pivotal role in what happened a few hours later, she's really playing with fire. Not only was the incident none of her business, but she deliberately shucked her own job to make it her business. If she's aiding and abetting the problem, she's liable to wind up fired. Hell, she may have already quit. We're used to working under the gun with absolutely no help, so when that possibility came up, after we raged for a minute about it, we shrugged, said "Whatever," and got back to work. It's her job to lose, if that's the way she wants it, but the whole thing is still damned puzzling.

I can't get the full story of what happened from D/B, which makes me suspect she said something really bad, but then again, she's not stupid either, and although she may feel a certain way, she by no means puts herself in a position to take a beating in her career. That's the gist of what I walked into this morning.

Four hours later, we get an urgent email from the coordinator of the project saying we are to meet at a different time and at their main office. We had already had a different appointment and we were supposed to get a site visit for the purpose of reviewing Stinky Hippy's progress so far. Har. Now, we can't get Stinky to do her own paperwork and the things we ask of her in a timely manner. But she sure as hell beat it to the main office and got the state commissioner of the project in on it. Long story short, I'm pretty sure the meeting two days from now is for the purpose of railroading D/B, and Stinky thinks she's going to hide behind a wall of suits and cry "poor little me" so that they do her dirty work for her.

Now, I'm not saying D/B was in the right to scream at her. But after I typed up Stinky's personnel profile so that we would have some context to the situation, things look quite a bit different.

Her infractions and reprimands total three pages. Single spaced.

I had no idea how much she was costing us in time and money until I had to put it all together. So, since I'm always spoiling for a fight anyway, my next move is to say Bring it. I even found the places where we'd asked the state commissioner for help, and he chose to screw around instead. If we do one thing well, it's documentation. If Stinky expected this to be a smooth train ride over D/B's career, well, she's got a shift in the tracks coming. Then my conspiracy side kicked in and I thought, you know what? She knew she had that review coming on Thursday, and she had to know it wasn't going to be good. So why not make the first move and wag the dog for somebody else?

So now, after all the misery she's put us through, she's stirred up the wrong hornets' nest.

Having recently won my last protracted battle, I've been itching for a new arena to walk into. I can't help it; it's in my nature. If there's a dog fight, I can't stand not to be in it. After all, I basically got an award for it.

-- Virgil. Grr.