Poking people at work

I'm not one for pissing people off just to piss them off. Like my coworkers, I never try to ruffle feathers. I enjoy being bright, cheery and caring. I enjoy this because that's who I am. I enjoying asking about people's weekends. I enjoy hearing about their kids, motorcycle trips and antiquing. But some coworkers, they are just asking for it.

It's the coworkers who are wound so very, very tight. The ones who places WAY too much emphasis, pour WAY too much energy into things that do not matter.

Like my office mate, the one I share my office with. When I'm not here, she is. And she likes her stuff just so. And she has a lot of stuff in our office. Beanie babies, little farm animal figurines, little glass knick nacks and little dolls everywhere. She's uptight as all get out.

She leaves notes for me like, "Make sure you keep the radio station to where it was set when you leave." or "Could you use another office chair? I can't figure out how to adjust it back to the right height after you've used it."

In other words, she is just asking for it!

So I move things. Subtly. I move a little cow here or a little beanie duck there. I adjust the height of the monitor here or move the blinds there. And when I come back to the office, everything is back where it was. Like a boomerang. Then I sit and wait for a month or two then I start moving stuff again.

It's subtle. It's petty. It's oh so satisfying.

I also like to employ words to poke at people. Like Irregardless. Or lay/lie. Or orientate or unrepentant. Or peppering my speech with local colloquialisms. Eh. Yah der. An so. I enjoy sounding like I'm from Fargo. It irritates people.

I do this because yesterday I had a patient show up drunk. This is not entirely unheard of. But he was very very drunk. And homeless. He is homeless because he refuses to work with our homeless program. Or our alcohol rehabilitation programs. Which are free to him. And we can't force him to do jack because in this country you can be drunk and homeless. It's your right.

So he keeps showing up. Cause he's homeless and our building is warm. And the homeless shelter gets boring I guess. Only this time he was so drunk he pissed himself during group. And we called the police to pick him up. And he ran out of the building. The police lost him. How fast could a drunk homeless man run in 5 degree weather? Fast enough to elude the police I guess. They would continue to look for him they said.

Then, one of my coworkers was heading home some 5 hours later. She was stopped at a stoplight and she looked to her right. She saw him, on the sidewalk, next to a snowbank. Half asleep. She covered him with a blanket from her car and woke him up. And he barked at her. Cause he's still drunk and belligerent. And she called 911 and they picked him up.

And this is my job. These are people I work with.

And if we are going to get through this together, we need to poke at each other once in a while.

An so, irregardless of how you have your beanie babies set up, ima gonna move them.