So I don’t know if you’ll remember this but I’ve spent the past five years working next to a guy who is gross and creepy and horrible and I’ve spent a lot of time air-strangling him and making obscene gestures at him from behind our shared cubicle wall and quoting him on Twitter while HE bitched about how nobody appreciated him and carried on truly mortifying private phone conversations within earshot of… well, everyone, and read the paper and took naps at his desk (complete with snoring) and burped A LOT, like to the point where I thought there might be something medically wrong, and asked me totally inappropriate questions like where do I shop for panties and stuff like that.
I call him the Creepy Dude.
(For the record, he actually DOES have a real name but it doesn’t fit his personality at all and I refuse to use it. NO name fits except “The Creepy Dude” because that is EXACTLY what he is and it’s what I’ve called him from Day One and will continue to call him when I think of him, which hopefully will be never after I finish writing this.)
Anyway, THE CREEPY DUDE FINALLY RETIRED, Y’ALL. He really did. They had a party and everything. Well, it was actually a party for other people — Ratty Cardigan Scottish Old Guy and Oddly Quiet Bad Haircut Lady both retired this month, too — and the Creepy Dude had to piggyback onto their party because HEY! Big surprise! When you spend 15 years making sure everyone in the office knows how much you hate them and hate your job, it turns out nobody’s too excited about throwing you a big send-off bash of your own! Or really doing anything other than silently pray you’ll actually LEAVE and never, never, never come back! Who knew?! Certainly not the Creepy Dude, who spent weeks making passive-aggressive comments about how nothing was being planned in his honor while everyone else just kept their fingers crossed behind their backs and said things like “Yeah, that really IS too bad” while secretly organizing a huge happy hour for the day AFTER his retirement to celebrate our new life without him.
So anyway, for the first time yesterday I got to walk into work without having to mentally prepare myself to not drive a stake through the Creepy Dude’s head. It was lovely but also weird because I really did spend a lot of time hating that guy with the kind of passion that one can only describe as “ass-burning” and now I kind of don’t know what to do with myself.
There’s no one over there to throw imaginary hate-daggers at or stab voodoo dolls of or cry to the BFF about how “Seriously. I. Just. Hate. Him. Soooooo. Muuuuuuuuuch” and frankly, I’m a little bored. I keep looking around my cubicle for something to do — I mean besides WORK, obviously — but there’s nothing except my Encyclopedia of Useless Information and a mirror that just keeps reminding me that my bangs are NEVER going to outgrow this shitty in-between stage.
By the way, did you know gorillas never snore? And the world record for the most bananas eaten in one minute is 81? And the dot above the lowercase letter “I” is called a “tittle”? And Nero’s second wife Poppaea kept five hundred asses to provide milk for her bath? And not a single one of them was named Dr. Phil?
If I had a pet ass, I would TOTALLY name it Dr. Phil.
So now here I am, bored and alone without anyone or anything to hate except my bangs. And Dr. Phil.
I think maybe I need a new gig.