Wise Girl

Since clearly this hasn’t been covered before, since you’ve never really had anyone working “underneath” you so to speak, but clearly there are a few issues of work etiquette that have escaped you, so I wish to address them now. Please listen carefully.

1. Do not sniff my food. I understand that you were curious as to what “smelled so good,” and noticed that I was eating lunch. If you wish to ask me about my meal, or even inquire about my interest in cooking, that is fine. But do not, under any circumstances, grab my food and hold it within an inch of your cracked, runny nose, and haunt me with the image of god knows what sort of skin and snot particles floating onto my food. I eat lunch in the office because I’m way too poor to eat out on the salary you pay me. Unlike the rest of the staff, I am not morbidly obese. If you keep putting your face in my food, I won’t eat it, and I will slowly wither away. That would be bad.

2. Do not get mad at me for things that happened before I started working here. I began in September. SEPTEMBER. August happens BEFORE SEPTEMBER. June and July happen even before August. If something was not not filed or processed properly in August, and I was not informed of it in SEPTEMBER, you cannot, under any circumstances, yell at me for not doing it in August. When I point this out, you cannot tell me to “stop being defensive.”

3. I cannot read your mind. If I could read minds, I would not be working here. I would have my own little psychic counseling services office, or an elaborate blackmailing scheme, or I’d hide out near ATMs and find out people’s pin numbers. Maybe I’d write a brilliant screenplay based on my real-life mind-reading antics. Since I DO NOT have this skill, do not get mad at me when I don’t know everything you are thinking.

4. Do not call me a “little shit.” I know you are trying to establish some sort of joking comraderie with me, but it’s really unprofessional. Just because you treat me like shit, does not mean you can call me a little shit. At least not to my face.

5. Do not get mad when other people don’t understand you. Considering this, do not become upset when you say “The thing...the thing on the thing. The new thing. The new thing for the people that you made on the computer.” and I don’t know what you’re talking about. As mentioned above, I cannot read your mind.

6. Do not laugh maniacally when you pass off a task to me. I understand that you are thrilled you don’t have to do the craptacular projects you now have me to complete, but please do not gloat in my face. Also, do not share this glee with other workers who are thrilled to be relieved of the same burden.

7. Do not give me contradictory information. Also, do not get mad when I only succeed in doing half of what you asked, because attempting to do all of what you asked would create a paradox, and I’m pretty sure a vortex in space time would open up and swallow me whole. Which I wouldn’t really mind that much.

8. Do not ask me to carry out

tasks that you have no idea of how

to complete.