Deep Breaths

While I have kept my promise not to alienate any of my coworkers, I have recently experienced some “deep breath” moments. You know, the kind of moment where, if you don’t take a deep breath, you may end up throttling someone? Yeah. That kind.

As of today, I have found the antagonist within my new cubicle jungle.

It is not who I at first thought it would be. It is not Designer Whiny Pants; his whininess has lessened greatly, and truthfully, we have gotten along just fine from the start.

It is not the guy two cubicles down, who has a whiny voice that I constantly hear, as he makes ‘whipped phone calls to his wife on a terribly regular basis, and who has phlegm issues that I hear too much of (and not because he’s talking about them, if ya know what I mean). No, despite the fact that I overhear him say things like, “[Joe] ‘rogered’ what I was saying, so I thought we were agreed,” he is not the one.

Nor is it the woman, two cubicles further down, with the croup-tacular cough, and who refuses to “release” her sneezes at the end. It is not this woman, even though a few days earlier, she left to pick up a sick child from school, and now obviously has what the child had- and she is spreading it to us all every day. Thanks, lady. Go the hell home.

My antagonist is a fellow healthcare planner. He is senior to me; at this point in my career, damn near everybody still is.

It started out innocently enough. He started a department layout, and it was assigned to me to flesh it out with actual room sizes, handicapped accessibility, etc. As I’m starting to put it into CAD, he strolls past and asks, “Are you using lines, or walls? You should use walls. I think you’ll like it better.” Hey. Who is the CAD Monkey here? Leeme ‘lone.

This, in addition to him walking by, nearly every 15 minutes, and stopping to ask, “how’s it coming?” It would be going a lot faster if you’d go the hell away and stop interrupting my train of thought, jackass.

He then takes my completed layout, and changes it completely. It now looks nothing like what I drew; not to mention the accessibility problems it now has. I feel soooo productive.

Today, I had one assigned task to accomplish- rearranging the layout of another department. This is a task that would have taken me the whole day. At lunchtime, he takes it away from me to finish it himself. To add to the fun, he has, in the meantime, completely changed the shell of the building- which isn’t even the part he’s supposed to be working on! PA and I have been the ones working on the shell plans, trying to get the square footage numbers worked out, and this yahoo just changes it all without any background information as to why it was that way in the first place. There are now problems with the fire exit paths, and he completely got rid of the building lobby. PA was on vacation today, so I had no recourse, because I’m the new kid- I pretty much have to shut up and take it if PA’s not around to back me up. Then, Mr. Healthcare Planner goes over to DWP’s desk and starts sketching his version of what the elevations should now look like (which is apparently ass). Again, this is not his area, as DWP is in charge of the elevation design. DWP wasn’t around to witness this- [snorf]- art taking place.

So there I sat, planned work for the day gone, and the building completely changed by a guy who was only supposed to plan the insides. He offers me another department to plan. It is now 3:00. It is implied that it should be done by 5:00. No freakin’ way- it will take at least a whole day. Hell if I’m staying late tonight- the office is closed tomorrow.

For the next two hours, he passed by six times to ask “How’s it coming?”

[deep breaths]

***

Go and check out the latest link I Work With Fools. I came across it while looking for a better way to explain how Croup-tacular lady sneezes. Didn’t find the explanation, but the site is kinda funny!