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NIC'S MONTHLY

July 2006

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I use to work with a person that had very weird snacking habits. He would take Top Ramen noodles, smash the package and then eat the crumbles. One day I even saw him eating Beef Bullion cubes, as if they were potato chips! At my new job, I work with a woman who is completely obsessed with telling all the little intricate details of her sex life. She recently told me that she had to break up with a guy and he wasn�t taking it very well. Of course I had to ask why he so upset, and come to find out that she was the first woman that he had ever �tossed a salad� with. WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!!! And since she was telling me this, she obviously didn�t think it was a big deal.

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Monday Morning: The alarm sounds and your brain is attempting to tell your body it�s time. It�s time to drag yourself out of bed, get yourself together so you can get THERE. Your brain then working against itself says this, �Well I really don�t want to go there anyway, isn�t today the day he is back from vacation?� Your body, who is more apt to respond to the negative thinking says, �Ok 10 more minutes!� and without thinking you slam the snooze button and drift back off to sleepy town. And if you are anything like me, you repeat this process at least 3 to 10 more times before you finally realize you have exactly 40 minutes, to take a shower, shift through the closet for an decent outfit, which of course you can�t pull together, so you opt for something you probably wore last week in a pile of �not too dirty clothes�, fight through Monday morning traffic, AND THE WORST CASE SCENERIO have to stop for gas, because you were too lazy Sunday night to respond the low fuel indicator in your car because you thought at that moment, �Oh, I�ll just get up a little earlier and stop on the way tomorrow.� All with the hopes to arrive at work on time! Or at the very least get there before your supervisor strolls in at about 9:00 am!

Whew� that�s a lot huh? But I am willing to bet any of you that you are sitting there nodding in agreement to the scene I have just described. And the question is why? Why do we try to avoid going to work? The most obvious would be that we all feel that our time can and should be spent doing far better adventures. Personally, I�d like to travel the world and build a mansion in Jamaica, and how can I do that if I have to be somewhere Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 5:30? But I found that a big chunk of the reason most of us hate pulling into the job parking lot has more to do with the people at the job and less to do with the job itself.

That got me to thinking, who are we dealing with day in and day out? Who at your job is making your life miserable? I asked a few folks about their coworker woes, and WOW! Some of us work with some very interesting individuals. Here are their tales�.

I work with a 300 pound redneck who wants to be too damn helpful all the time. I can be in a conversation with another person and he�ll butt right in to give his spin on the topic. And he�s always there to point out the most obvious. To make matters worse he�ll chime in even when he really shouldn�t have an opinion, just like the time I was talking to another black coworker about raising black kids today. We were in the middle of the conversation and he goes, �I knew a black woman when I was a kid, who made buttermilk cornbread.� I stop to look at him and said, �What in the hell does buttermilk cornbread have to do with raising black children?� He replied, �She raised me on that buttermilk cornbread.� I said, �Oh so I suppose that makes you an authority about black folks?� His response was, �Well I have every recording of the TOP black artist!�
Just today as a matter of fact, he thought it really helpful to give me some advice. Our jobsite is under construction and has been for some time now and all employees have been instructed to not enter those specific areas, well he tells me that I should just walk AROUND the 9-foot hole and go out the building the same way he does!!!

    I am Mexican and worked at one time in an attorney�s office with all white people. This one female partner came in one day complaining about how her Mexican housekeeper had to take time off to have a baby, and it was such an inconvenience for her. That would have been fine, but she had to add to her complaints, �You know how they are?� I shot her a glance and said, �No I don�t, why don�t you explain it to me?� She explains how, all Mexicans do is lie around and have babies and have 50 people living in one apartment. �Oh really? I�m Mexican and I don�t have any of that going on!�
She then sympathetically tries to explain how I am different and that I have an actual job. I told her that I wasn�t different from them or anybody for that matter, her included. She says, �Oh no, I am white, I am different!� And at that point I flipped and started to cuss her out. We were both called into the senior partners� office, where of course her side of the story was changed. She had made it seem as though I just went Postal for no apparent reason. I had to get the last words in, which basically went something along the lines of, �Don�t let me catch you in the parking lot!� Needless to say, she spent the next year trying her best to get me fired to no avail.   But the saddest part about all this is that she is an attorney that specializes in employment discrimination and wrongful termination cases.