Yesterday I was at work and I gave my boss a stack of papers neatly grouped and held together by a paperclip. She looked at the paperclip, yanked it from the papers, and threw across the desk sneering that she only liked big paperclips. At first I thought she was kidding and I laughed. Then I saw her icy stare and realized she was serious. This woman wanted a big paperclip and she wanted it now. Penis envy? I think so.
The other day she called me over to her desk and handed me a piece of paper saying it needed to be three-hole punched. She then handed me the three-hole puncher she had on her desk. I stood in front of her and calmly punched the holes in the paper, all the while wanting to punch a hole in her. Her behavior is so unnecessary. Unfortunately there are others like her.
A friend of mine recently worked as an assistant for a woman who loved the color purple. Actually she didn't love it as much as she was possessed by it. Everything she wore was purple. Everything she wrote was in purple ink. Her car was upholstered in purple fabric. I can only imagine what her home must've been like. Purple? For sure! My friend, who hated the color purple, was forced to write only with purple pens, use purple post-its, and have all emails in purple text. If it wasn't purple his boss wasn't going acknowledge it.
The purple lady's personality was as strange as her purple obsession. She went through assistants faster than it took for her purple ink to dry. How scary is that?
I often wonder what makes people act this way? I assume it's low self-esteem combined with a desperate need to feel important and be the center of attention. Will these bullies ever wake up and see the error of their ways? We can only hope.
Maybe the paperclip lady should get together with the purple lady… now that would make a great episode of "The Office."
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