New "Ass"istant

One afternoon, Overshare and Toolshed ran into my office.

Overshare and Toolshed, in unison: Guess what?? We’re having a baby!!

This statement gave me a mini-heart attack. And then subsequently gave me an incredibly strong urge to stab out my own eyes. It’s not a pretty mind-picture to have, these two procreating, much less with each other.

But by this point, I’ve grown quite accustomed to Overshare’s random utterances that are meant to shock me into asking for clarification. So I just sat and looked at the two of them, waiting for the inevitable explanation.

Overshare and Toolshed, in unison again: We hired our new assistant!!

Yes, Dear Readers, I’m pleased to present to you Overshare and Toolshed’s new mutual assistant, Pompous McLaterson IV. Despite how real that name sounds, I promise, I made it up. And in order to get the job, you might remember, he must have spoken only in phrases at his interview.

Pompous McLaterson IV started the very next day. Apparently, he’s been unemployed for a while and is eager to start. He is a nice-enough guy, if slightly pompous... but only in that freshly-graduated "I'm going to change the world by the sheer force of my will and brilliance" naive way. Unfortunately for him, hell, unfortunately for us all, it didn’t take long for the oddities to begin.

At one point on his first day, Overshare was in my office (oversharing of course) when Pompous came in with a question. Quite normal for a new employee to have a question for his supervisor on his first day. He asked, she answered, he left.

He wasn’t two steps away from my door when it all began.

Overshare, loudly: Isn’t he so odd-looking?
Anonymous: What?
Overshare: Pompous! He’s just… ODD-looking.

It should be noted that Pompous was in NO WAY odd-looking. In fact, he was rather attractive.

Anonymous: I wouldn’t classify it as Odd, per se.
Overshare: Oh, it’s ODD. Something about his face.
Anonymous: What about his face?
Overshare: It’s ODD.

And that's it. That's all she'd say. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh DEAR. Overshare calling him “odd-looking” really had only one meaning. She thought he was attractive, and wanted someone else to say it first. When I refused to say it, she walked all around the office, polling everyone as to whether they felt Pompous was, in fact, as odd-looking as she had deemed.

There is NO WAY IN HELL this is going to end well.

Smoking Know It All

Witty Comeback decided to take a few days to think over the pros and cons of taking over Tyrannical Sorority Sister’s position, including any potential backlash that might occur from Overshare, should she actually take the job. In the mean time, another candidate threw her hat into the ring: Smoking Know It All.

Smoking Know It All… it boggles the mind to even begin to describe her. She basically, if you ask her, knows everything. And I mean, everything. How to do her job, how to do your job, how to do Incredibly Important Uppity-Up’s job, how to build a space rocket from dental floss, a bra, and orange juice. You know, the basics.

And she never hesitates, never ever hesitates to tell you so, either. In fact, she can't wait to tell you. She loves to tell you that Salesman A was a wacko or that if the company ever fired her, she could cause Management to set fire to the walls with the depth of knowledge she has about its inner workings.

Seriously, Smoking Know It All is the absolute lynch pin to our entire company, and without her the entire thing would crumble like a deck of cards. Just ask her.

But you never actually have to ask her, since her favorite pastime is gossiping, which she accomplishes through her smoking habit. At any time of day, if you walk outside you are almost assured of running into Smoking Know It All. She stands there, waiting for prey… and as soon as she sees someone from the company, she pounces, luring them in with some sordid detail about some department of the company and then proceeds directly into an hour-long lecture about how if she were running things, we’d all be so much better off and why can’t the management just listen to her, because she knows what she’s talking about and sheez, you’d think they’d give her a raise for being This. Damn. Smart.

Smoking + gossiping + infinite knowledge + outrageous sense of entitlement = not someone you want to move into your department of the company.

And to add some more tinder to an already explosive situation, Smoking Know It All and TSS were pretty good friends. And by pretty good friends, I mean Smoking Know It All only said negative things about TSS sometimes. And some more: Smoking Know It All and Overshare had already been in a rather entertaining and legendary cat fight earlier in the year regarding a report.

I was beginning to feel sorry for Boss Man—he didn’t really have a whole lot of options. He could promote the under-qualified Overshare, and deal with her and her oversharing tendencies on a much more consistent basis; hire Smoking Know It All and be forced to hear, every day, how other people simply don’t know what they’re doing and how she really should just be named Emperor of the World already and then everything would finally be all sunshine and puppies and brandy; hire someone outside the company in a total crap shoot; or hire Witty Comeback and have to deal with the drama that Overshare would doubtlessly contribute to such a situation.

What’s a Boss Man to do?

Introducing Tyrannical Sorority Sister

Finally. I have been wracking my brains for weeks attempting to come up with that nickname. They usually come so easily, but this one was giving me fits. [Huge sigh of relief.]

On to the story.

It has come to my attention that I have neglected a certain aspect of Overshare’s life here in this crazy overshare world. For this oversight, I apologize, dear readers. Allow me to remedy that immediately.

You see, Overshare has a direct supervisor: Tyrannical Sorority Sister, or TSS for short.

My company doesn’t exactly have the most, how shall we say… efficient hiring processes. (Witty Comeback: Understatement, much?) It turns out that both TSS’s position and Overshare’s were empty at the same time… and instead of using some common sense HR decided to go ahead and hire Overshare, without a supervisor in place. They obviously did not anticipate the difficulty they had in hiring someone. It turned out that Overshare was in her position, without a direct supervisor, for a good six months before TSS was hired. And in that time, management had regulated a lot of TSS’s future duties to Overshare.

This, of course, led to the unfortunate and awkward situation of Overshare having to train her own supervisor. Unfortunate and awkward enough in any case, but when you have Overshare teaching anything… mixed with the fact that TSS turned out to the be the kind of employee that you pray every day will quit… let’s just say it led to some hilarity in its own right.

Now, to answer some questions I’m sure you have.

1. TSS is, in fact, a sorority sister. To this day. As in, she’s treasurer.
2. TSS is not, in fact, in college.
3. TSS is an older woman, with several adult children.
4. TSS lives in a separate city from the one in which our office resides. Her commute tops an hour each way.
5. TSS has never held a management position before.

You’ll see why she earned the “T” in her name in the next few entries. And just to round out this post, I’ll tell of the conversation TSS and I had that first led me to believe that something may be off. Keep in mind that she had been working in my office for a grand total of one week at this point.

Tyrannical Sorority Sister, waving a catalog at me: Buy some candles.
Anonymous Coworker: Candles?
TSS: Buy some candles.
Anonymous: Why are you selling candles?
TSS: For my sorority. Buy some.
Anonymous: Well, I don’t know.
TSS: It’s for a good cause.
Anonymous: Your sorority?
TSS: Yeah. We’re having our conference in Orlando this year.
Anonymous: And the candles…
TSS: Go towards our plane tickets.
Anonymous: Ah…
TSS: Buy some.
Anonymous: Well, it's just that I'm already committed to supporting several charities...
TSS: What, you have a problem with me or something? Buy. Some. Candles.

Wyoming

Eventually, the roommate situation got to be too much for Overshare, what with them complaining that CTF was over too much, and CTF hitting on the ugly one and all. So she decided to move out.

There was a scary month or two where she was actually considering moving in with CTF, including a horrific two-week period where she was visiting several potential apartments with him. All of us at the office tried to convince her that this was the Bad Idea to End All Bad Ideas, but shockingly enough, she didn’t listen to us. There’s nothing like moving in with your wannabe-Michael-Jackson felon ex-boyfriend to create an awkward situation, but whatever.

Thankfully, a better circumstance arose and the CTF/Overshare apartment never happened. But it does mean that a new character needs to be introduced into the saga.

I am pleased to introduce Overshare’s new roommate, Wyoming.

Wyoming, as you might have guessed, is from Wyoming. She’ll tell you. Over and over again. Her home state makes it into virtually every conversation she has.

Anyway, not only is Wyoming Overshare’s new roommate, oh no. That wouldn’t be blog-worthy. No, Wyoming is also a new coworker of mine. She and Overshare went to the same graduate school together, so when an opening came up in a different department in our company, she sent it on to Wyoming and encouraged her to apply.

The hiring process alone was a thing to behold—Overshare badgered our HR department every single day about whether or not they were going to hire her. A friend of ours is the person who was in charge of interviewing for the position and happens to sit very close to me. Every day, Overshare would stop by and ask how everything was going, despite being told repeatedly by HR and said friend that what she was doing bordered on the illegal. (Like she cared.) I ended up having many conversations with said friend, who almost lamented that Wyoming appeared to be the best fit for the job simply because he wasn’t sure how the Overshare factor was going to affect the workplace. But eventually, Wyoming was hired, and it turns out that she’s very good in the position.

But she’s weird.

Make that Weird, with a capital W.

For example:

A few weeks after she was hired and settled into her new job, Wyoming received a new computer. Her office is directly off of our reception area, so while IT was installing the new computer, there were some large boxes in the reception area that had once held the new monitor and CPU, etc. As all of us who have ever had computers replaced at work know, you’re basically useless while this process happens. Normal people stand around, chitchat with the IT guy (if he’s not too socially challenged), go to the bathroom, hang out with a friend, go to lunch, something. But, like I said, Wyoming is Weird.

So how does Wyoming handle the down time?

She climbs in one of the computer boxes, of course.

You read that right. Wyoming, a fully-grown mid-twenties woman in business casual, climbs into the discarded computer box and shuts the lid in order to wait out the computer change-over.

Not only that, but she calls out to the office to come and look.

Wyoming, voice muffled by box: Hey, hey! Receptionist! Go get Overshare!!
Receptionist: Why?
Wyoming: Isn’t it obvious?
Receptionist: Not really, no.
Wyoming: Cause I’m a girl in a box! A girl! In a box!
Receptionist: Ooooookkaaaaayyy…

(calls Overshare to come to the front)

Overshare: Hey, Receptionist. What’s up?
Wyoming, gleefully: Overshare! I’m a girl in a box!

Like I said, she’s Weird, that Wyoming-In-A-Box.

The Cast of Characters

To protect the innocent and guilty alike, names shall not be used on this blog. The cast of recurring characters is as follows:

Overshare: The woman herself. She's a twenty-something coworker of mine who by all accounts is a well-educated woman. Too bad she has no common sense about what you do and what you don't talk about at work. Not to mention that her personal life... well, it sucks.

CTF: Short for Chris the Felon. (Chris is not his real name.) He's the on-again, off-again boyfriend of Overshare. He's a doozy, let me tell you.

Toolshed: Coworker of mine who loves to talk to Overshare about her problems and give her bad advice.

Witty Comeback: My friend, another coworker, who is often subjected to conversations between Overshare and Toolshed due to the close proximity of their cubicles.

Anonymous Coworker: Me. Overshare for some reason seeks me out for the deepest, dirtiest parts of her life. She overshares with everyone-- but my office is like her own personal confessional booth.

New Additions:

Wyoming: Overshare's new roommate, a friend from graduate school. She's now a new coworker of mine as well. And she's Weird. But what else would you expect from someone who voluntarily lives with Overshare?

Oh-My-God-I-Loved-It: My nemesis at work, OMG loves to talk religion. Just ask her about the differences between Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists sometime.

Swedish Nanny: Aptly named, this foreign childcare-worker frequents Skank Bar, CTF's place of employment. Shrouded in an air of mystery, she apparently is also attracted to CTF. Must be the beer-flavored nipples.

Tyrannical Sorority Sister: She's Overshare's direct supervisor. She's not exactly management material.