The Prince of Darkness

Not on the job more than a few weeks and I’m dealing with the difficult employee from hell. Well, I suppose there are worse, from the stories I’ve heard. At least he doesn’t smoke crack in the bathroom or key my car on his way out or do me any physical harm.

But he is…annoying as all get-out. To the point where I’ve left the building for coffee several times rather than say something that would get me fired.

Before the first word left his lips it was clear that he was looking down his nose at me. No. Before then. When I returned my now-boss’s call inviting me in for my first interview, he was short and condescending on the phone. And then we met. And then he spoke. And it’s all gone downhill from there.

First of all, it’s been years since I worked for an ad agency. So I’d forgotten about the concept of time sheets, and keeping track of how many units of time I spend on a particular project. I worked for a company for eight years where all I did was punch in and punch out and didn’t have to account for anything at all, except weekly status meetings with my boss.

And when I didn’t grasp the entire concept of the time sheet in one gulp, he repeated it again, louder, as if he were in a foreign country and thought this was the way to get through to the natives – just speak slower and louder. When I couldn’t figure out the phone system immediately (I have multiple-phone-line dyslexia...one of the reasons I was never put on the switchboard rotation at my last job) he walked into my office and shoved the manual at me.

I also inherited the Project From Hell. A directory with so many parts and pieces it should require installation instructions and a seeing-eye dog. Most of these parts and pieces were missing, unaccounted for, lost in transition or just plain imaginary. It has also involved my learning InDesign on the fly (It’s a new desktop publishing program. It is, in many instances, replacing Quark, which has been the bread-and-butter desktop publishing program for fifteen years or so, until their management made the bonehead move of not getting an upgrade for Mac’s OS 10 operating system to market fast enough, leaving designers who’d already taken the plunge to 10 without a viable solution – hence, Adobe stepped in with InDesign.). Not only have I been doing this thing on deadline with not just one but two InDesign manuals at my fingertips, but it’s also required an extremely complicated and badly documented plug-in program in order to create not just one directory listing of all of the members of this organization the directory is for, but another grouping them all into occupational categories.

We’re coming down to the wire on this thing, so hence, I’ve been a bit on edge. And here’s the Prince of Darkness, whose role in the project has been to: 1. Coordinate which ads are actually going in this thing; 2. Creating the database for me in a format I can use in this software program I don’t know how to use; 3. Trying to help me figure out how to use the plug-in program, which amounts to him huffing out breaths and shoving papers at me and yelling at me that he’s already explained to me five times what to do; 4. Generally being a total bastard who thinks everyone he’s forced to work with is a redneck rube.

Now, I’m a little slower than I used to be, but I’m still in possession of most of my brain cells. It’s just taking me a bit longer to get up to speed on the learning curve. And whatever personal problems he’s going through, it’s no excuse to take them out on me.

Because I’m sure he’s deeply, deeply unhappy. And probably has a very small penis.

So I’ve decided not to let him bother me. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll give him my nicest smile and tell him to go fuck himself.

But nature took him down a peg this week, and while maybe it’s a bit mean-spirited of me, I’ve never been happier for a sudden thunderstorm in my life.

Because he’s been helping my boss coordinate a fund-raising event for a client – one of those feel-good things, with dinner and an auction, etc. As the guy is a wedding planner on the side, he took on the task of decorations, including arranging for the flowers, the tent, the linens, and…I’d heard about these for weeks…the paper luminaires.

“I hope to God it doesn’t rain,” he’d mutter, “Have you ever seen what happens to paper luminaires in the rain?”

No. Gosh, darn, I’ve never been out of my trailer ‘cept to go suck down a few brewskis at the local roadhouse so how am I supposed to know what things at a fancy shindig look like?

And while I can only predict the weather, I do not have the power to cause it.

But he’d been particularly nasty to me the week leading up to the event. And on Thursday, (the event to be early that evening) with flowers piled up in the office and tents set up and the luminaires in place, I went out for my usual lunch walk.

“Wouldn’t you know it?” I said to him when I came back. “It’s been beautiful all more morning, but the minute I step out the door, it starts to rain.”

He went ashen. “No. It can’t rain.”

“No, I don’t think it’s supposed to. Just a passing shower.” Because that’s what the weather report said. And it was beautiful, for the remainder of the afternoon.

And around six o’clock, I start getting these weird pains. “Can’t be,” I said. The sky was blue, with just a few big puffy clouds floating by.

And around six forty-five, as I was sitting and doing a crossword puzzle, the pains intensified. “This is ridiculous,” I thought. “What did I injure now?”

And then the wind blew in like a train. And I heard the thunder. And the heavens split apart.

And I smiled.

For one, because I knew I wasn’t crazy. It was all rain pain getting into my muscles.

For two, because I was thinking about what happens to paper luminaires in the rain.