Open To Interpretation
There is a woman under my supervision that I am trying very, very hard to get fired. In reality I am assisting my super in doing whatever we (legally and within the guidelines of human resource/employee handbook protocol), can to terminate her gainful employment with my wondrous corporate company.
She is my own personal Nina from corporate accounting and I am the evil Bobs unleashed upon the unsuspecting workforce, with a sly smile and an evil intellect, cleverly disguised behind a pair of spectacles.
My issue with her has nothing to do with work based performances or attendance problems. While my particular problem is personal in nature, it is not based on her race, creed, ethnic background or political stance (although admittedly, her jesus freak stance and nearly daily instance that I find god is horribly annoying). No dearest of diaries, none of this is of any importance to me and all pale in comparison to the simple factoid that she constantly snaps her gum.
From the second she walks in the door, until the second she leaves she munches on her gum like a cow chews cud. She continuously snaps and blows bubbles and by the end of the day her lips are caked with spittle, which she sometimes will spew on myself and my super as we conduct various daily tasks the require us to interact with the employees we manage, up to and including her. But what makes this all the more difficult for me to deal with is the �pet peeve, fingernails on a chalkboard factor.�
I have been entirely too smart for my own good for a very long time. During this time, I have managed to come up with or realize fears, phobias, annoyances and pet type peeves that most of the human race would never think to come up with. One of these epic realizations of little global importance was that snapping of gum makes my hair stand on end, causes me to grind me teeth and gives me the �Heebie Geebies�; the exact same result can be duplicated by grating your fingernails on a chalk board in my presence.
Outside of any environment EXCEPT the one that pays my bills, I would have dealt with this grievance long ago by simply freaking out on her thus putting an end to my suffering. But in my corporate environment, I have to �do things by the book� and with my most recent run in with the �powers that be� I need to be extra careful to make sure said job carries on long enough for me to go on my weeklong paid vacation. Therefore, I have become reacquainted and intimately familiar with a dusty friend that has sat in the bottom of my drawer from the day I started that is appropriately titled, �employee handbook.� While this tome of knowledge had not initially helped me locate a single line item that I can use to get her to stop chewing her gum, it has provided a couple of minor rules that my super and I are now gleefully enforcing upon this particular problem worker.
She has now been written up for �scent violation�, also called environmental contamination, for wearing too much and too strong of perfume (it�s in the book!). In addition we attacked her for dress code violations; wearing shoes with no back and even though she is in her later 40�s, for dressing in a skirt that was �too short� by company standards (in the book with illustrations even!). We also tagged her for �inappropriate use of company material�, of which I am personally familiar with, for printing bible passages onto a company printer (double sweet cuz of the god factor and again, is in the book).
But in order to solve my gum problem, it took a bit of creative interpretation on my part to nip this fucker in the bud. There is a wonderfully vague phrase regarding, �...conduct that results in sub-standard work performance. If the agent has been warned on repeat occasions, set-up on a development plan to correct this sub-standard performance and does not show any sort of improvement, warnings can be issued in line with the practices set-up for attendance, with said warnings escalating appropriately, up to and including termination!�
It is with much glee, that I must confess that I am now tabbing between these rambling and the employee write up form at this very moment. Come next week, when this bane of my team re-enters the work force from a much-saluted vacation, I will take an extreme amount of joy in reverting back to any number of demonic public school teachers from my youth. I will present her most recent write up for signature purposes along with a garbage can and state matter of factly, �all right Missy, spit it out and knock it off. And don�t make me send you to the Principals�I mean Human resources�office.�
So the morale of this story?
In the world of my corporate America, you will be hard pressed to find someone that can get a problem agent fired faster than I can. While this doesn�t always make me a boss you want to work for, it definitely keeps my folks in line and even if they do or do not fear me, they most assuredly respect me.
And on the subject of interpretation, if one lowly middle management employee can finagle the wording in a company handbook to suit him as he pleases, what kind of power do you think the Dubyah�s guvment has over how to interrupt policies, like say�I don�t know�the patriot act?
If this doesn�t concern you, it should.
If this doesn�t keep you up at night wondering what sort of long-term ramifications such censorship has started the ball rolling on, then maybe you should pay more attention.
Or at the barest of minimums�be afraid, dearest of diaries. Be very, very afraid.
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