Tornado named Texas

This is the best way to describe my mostly insane coworker that I call Texas. She is a tornado of sorts. You can always kind of tell when the conditions are right for a tornado outbreak to happen. The clouds get really stormy and dark. The winds pick up and there is just this feeling in the area that nothing good is going to happen. That’s the way it is with Texas in many different ways. Yesterday was one of those times that I could just feel the tension building and waiting to be exploded. She had her review with the boss and from what I know, it didn’t go well. But as long as he was here, she was doing a good job hiding the fact that she was pissed at work. But as soon as he left, things started to unravel. This must be when the funnel cloud formed. She was snapping at staff and snatching papers all about the area. She was slamming drawers closed. She was evil and I knew that it was time to get out of Dodge – and I ran out of the building before the disaster known as a Tornado named Texas hit with full force.

 

I don’t know the facts of what happened after I left and I really don’t want to know either. But today, she came in early and was emailing everyone around how she is here to help everyone. This is the MO for when she has been put back in her place and/or when she has been super bad and she wants the boss to disbelieve what is being said about her. The problem is, this is really just another formation of the Tornado.

See right now she is promising all of these things. She is promising to help people learn how to use our brand new fax services – but then promptly disappears to help with the ‘stress relief class’ or because she is still ordering supplies (again, how hard is it to order 6 boxes of copy paper?). So when she does get back to her desk and there is a whole bunch of people looking for her because she offered this help, it’s all going to explode. This maybe more accurately called a Micro-Burst or something like that. The winds will be the whole hissing and yelling action going on. She is going to storm off downstairs like straight-line winds and just take anyone out between her desk and her escape outside. This all could be avoided if she didn’t stir up the requests for her by emailing everyone that she is going to train them in the next couple days.

 

To add to this, Texas has been on the surface offering support. She is whining now if I don’t give her something that she thinks she can do. I have been burned before – she never follows thru with her offers. She is acting like she wants to know everything that is going on so she can go complain about it behind my back. She acted like she didn’t know that I’m going down to Cisco’s Networkers event in June, although I heard her complaining about it the other day about how unfair it is that I get to go somewhere cool. (Yes, it’s in Orlando, but I’m taking a freaking certification test that I’m really scared about and I really don’t know how I’m going to find the time to study for it!) She has complimented my clothing today (which is a joke because I’m dressed down today and the clothes are WAY too big). I know that one change of the conditions, if I ask if she has done any of the things I have asked her to do, the papers are going to fly, the pencils are going to become projectiles, mail will be like flying cows, and up-up-up-away with the rest of the day.

 

The problem is - it seems as if we are in a permanent Tornado Warning condition at work. We never know when that funnel cloud is going to come down and just wipe us all out of the way. Like Tornados, there usually are no warnings. Our skies don’t turn that funky electric green color and we don’t have a woman on a bike turning into the wicked witch. There is no way for us to know what is going to happen and when it is going to happen – we just permanently know that it is about to happen.

 

So I’m just waiting for Texas to touch down and create more havoc again. Kind of a bad way to anticipate a whole day.