Bring in the New Year!

I'll bring the New Year of 2010 with a story about...

How the One Who Almost Was Became the One Who Never Will Be

Confusing enough? You won't be after this episode of Soap.


I'll try to keep it simple but it really isn't a simple story.

I'm not even going to give this woman a name like I normally do for my real life characters in this little Pope melodrama.

Okay, if you are up to date, you know I transferred positions within my company at the end of Spring 2009. It has been quiet an adjustment. In the process I became friends with a female coworker. We hit it off really well. How well? I thought that this might have relationship potential.

Of course there was one issue. Her live in boyfriend. Plus she's got her own issues. She swore up and down that she was eventually leaving him. So I kept thinking I can wait this out a bit. We did try to spend sometime together but low and behold he'd show up either uninvited or invited at the last minute. That got old real quick.

She's got a good heart and is to nice. She took in a worthless relative because he had no options left. She's basically treating someone in his mid 20s like a teenager, paying his court costs and a whole bunch of other shit to help him clear his record to go into the military. I don't have a problem with it but for the constant bitching.

This woman isn't from the area. By some weird fluke process the company offered her a job in this plant when she applied for a job in another plant in another state. It's unheard of within my company. But it's a good job so she took it but now she has no friends and family around her.

With no relatives or friends in the area she tries extremely hard to socialize with coworkers. I understand that. I don't do it on purpose cause I keep my social life and work life separate. Violet, Rebecca or any other woman I've dated has never been to a company function or met any coworkers. That's how I am. So besides me, she befriended another fellow transferee, also a woman. They hit it off great and go out to dinner and lonely girl tries to solve her problems.

Lonely Girl, there I gave her a name, also hit it off with another woman at work. This woman asked her to help plan a party. Lonely Girl is besides herself with joy that she has friends now. At first I was happy for her but over the weeks she doesn't shut the fuck up about the planning and the party. I don't give a rat's ass. So when she announced in the lunch room that some people were extremely jealous that she was invited and they weren't, it took everything I had in me to keep from doing two thing. First, I had to keep from throwing up. Second, I had to keep from mouthing off like I normally do. I wanted to stand up and yell,"Goddamn, no one gives a fuck. No one cares. You are making everybody fucking sick with your pretentious yammering on about it. I hope it goes up in fucking flames you Goddamn lunatic." Instead I looked at my coworker sitting next to me and rolled my eyes.

So the next thing she needed was to work day shift so she could take her relative to court. Understandable. A coworker volunteered to work Lonely Girl's night shift. It created a problem so someone else also volunteered to help out and stay on the night shift. Two people had to give up their day shifts to accommodate Lonely Girl's scheduling requests. I had to give up the peace and quiet of night shift to help her out. Basically three people got moved for her benefit. So the next time we are schedule to work days, the supervisor put us on nights. It's fair. Two people had to give up their day shifts and now are getting them back next week.

Lonely Girl goes ape shit and turns into the drama queen on how she can't work so many night shifts in a row, how she'll never get to work out with her coworker, ever, if they move her and blah blah blah blah.

I kept my lid shut. She wants to file a grievance. She always wants to file a grievance. My reply, I'm the shop steward, will be, I can't take it. She practiced in individual negotiation to get what she wanted. She didn't follow protocol to change shifts so now the supervisor is rectifying the imbalance created. Had she followed proper procedure she'd have a case but the Union can't back up individual deals. Also if I take the grievance the other two coworkers will have one to file too. They got screwed out of a day shift and can file one to get it back and they have a stronger case than Lonely Girl. She hasn't asked me to file one yet and I won't but I'm betting Monday that she will.

So that's how Lonely Girl went from potential relationship material to someone who never will be and is walking a fine line with me friendship wise to because I've come to the firm belief that she is just batshit fucking crazy.

Happy New Year,
Pope John Paul III