Warning: to anyone who is considering reading this, be aware that this is one long posting, and the author recommends taking any planned bathroom breaks you have been postponing, fetching any sustenance you may be requiring in the near future, and making sure you have a nice comfortable chair.
SO, I was in the recent past (as in Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning) absolutely incensed with rage in a manner which I haven’t been for a very long time. I was so angry I lost the ability to form coherent sentences and was only able to spurt out derogatory swear words spasmodically. The reason for my rage was (and still is, although I am much calmer now and am only simmering with a suppressed desire to twist off his testicles and force feed them to him) a most despicable human being going by the name of John*.
Now, it is necessary to give you a bit of background information about John. John is 24, and a crew leader at my work. Admittedly, he’s a very junior one, and he’s still only a casual like the rest of us little worker ants. He only rose to the rank of crew leader from being a barman because my previous two bosses (one of whom left for being a whistleblower, taking the general manager and another manager with him) loved him and basically made a job for him. So he now runs functions, despite the fact that he’d never worked on what we call ‘the floor’ in his life. He’d never actually waited on people and didn’t know what we, the waiting staff, actually do. He relies so heavily on the more experienced staff members that it makes us (the ones he exploits) very, very angry. It’s difficult to take orders off someone who doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. He also does no work himself now, something he’s quite open about. Other crewleaders will give direction from the kitchen, where they’re sorting and polishing the endless cutlery that arises from a dinner. He doesn’t. He just wanders about, stuffing about with his favourite little waitresses, or busies himself with meaningless paper shuffling. He learnt very, very well from our two previous bosses who made the purposeful walk while doing nothing into an art form. He doesn’t even know how to sort the cutlery (something again he is quite open about and also seems to take some sort of perverse pride in). I find it near impossible to take orders off him. He just makes me so angry! He relies on me, or a few other staff members, to give the other less experienced staff direction, and see to it that the cutlery and glasses and things are kept up to date, while he wastes time. And yet, at any time, he can just come in and send the staff you’ve allocated tasks to off to do other things because he is still the boss.
John began dating Frieda* last year. Frieda is the sweetest, kindest and most gentle girl I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. She was raised by her grandparents, and still lives with them. I know she doesn’t have a dad, but I’ve never inquired as to why, or what happened to her mum. The best way to describe her is as a ‘real little lady’. She truly is. She went to the most exclusive girl’s school in this city (not that that really counts for much – another friend of mine went to this school and used to keep a long fingernail for doing coke with). She’s thin (size 6) with wispy blonde hair, very rarely swears and is so graceful! She always thinks of others. I can’t think of any more virtues, but she’s definitely got them. Such a paragon of virtue may get on your nerves, I can hear you thinking. But she’s just so good you have to love her, and want to protect her from all the nasty things out there.
So, John and Frieda are dating. Frieda is madly in love with John, her first boyfriend for a couple of years (she’s a little shy). John also enjoys smoking pot every opportunity he gets, and is frustrated with Frieda not wanting to sit in his living room with him and his stoner flatmates as he partakes in this activity. He also wants more sex more often, and I heard him on a few occasions pressing her to go back to his house after work when she didn’t want to. He’s too lazy to get his license, and she chauffers him about, driving from the other side of the river where she lives over to collect him and take him about of a weekend. He knows how to drive, and has his own car (rustbucket that it is), yet rejects her offer of letting him drive to get some more experience behind the wheel.
John and Frieda have been together, gosh, it has to be at least a year, when John dumps her. He says he doesn’t love her and it isn’t fair to keep on dating her if he doesn’t. Well, fair enough, I can hear you say. Yep, I agreed. Admittedly, he’s a bloody moron for letting such an amazing girl go, but if he doesn’t feel as deeply for her as she does for him, it’s probably kinder to break up sooner rather than later. So he breaks up with her, yet neglects to tell her why (he told another staff member this reason some time later). And then he won’t speak to her at all at work. Which is very difficult if you work in the same department as someone. Frieda cries pretty much constantly when she’s at home, and gives up eating because she’s so sad. Not a good idea if you’re already a size six (although I could do with being that lovelorn myself). She never smiles or laughs anymore. All the banquets girls who are particular friends with Frieda hate John accordingly, myself included. Yet you can’t say anything bad about him to Frieda (like you can do so much better, and do you really want a druggy for a boyfriend?), who still loves him. This goes on for a couple of months, until Frieda heads off with a friend for a great trip away for a couple of months to Broome (Western Australia), comes back blonder, browner and much happier. She’s also gained a little weight, and is eating normally again. The only thing wrong is that John still won’t speak to her, and that she wrote him a letter basically putting her heart on the line and I think asking why he had to break up with her and why he wouldn’t talk to her and posted it to him the day she left for Broome. He hadn’t responded at all to her letter.
Enter onto the scene an influx of new staff, including one Kelly*. Kelly is 24, short, pretty in a lot of make-up and perfect lipstick way, and seems too nice to be true. She also has broken up with her husband, and has two sons. We all like her enough to work with her, if you know what I mean. Like, we’re not inviting her to join our gang of girls who are friends socially as well as at work, but we don’t mind her. Kelly has the hots for John. John has a birthday, and invites everyone at work to head over to his favourite watering hole (and gosh it is a hole of a place) on a Saturday night a week before his birthday. Kelly and some other girls go, including Sheila. Later that night when the girls have left John at his pub and gone on elsewhere John sends Sheila a message, saying Kelly is gorgeous and is she attached? Sheila responds that no, she’s not attached. She does tell Kelly about Frieda and John’s previous relationship, though, and warns her not to say anything to Frieda because it would just upset her. Four days later, John, Kelly, Frieda, myself and a couple of other staff are working a dinner. John goes home early (being a slack shithead), and Kelly runs to Frieda and says “John has asked me to go out with him on Saturday night! Do you mind? Why did you two break up? Do you still have feelings for him?” and other really thoughtful stuff like that. Why she did this when she’d been warned about how upset Frieda had been over her break-up with John I can only speculate about (like she’s a troublemaking little drama queen). Frieda is devastated all over again, despite pretending to Kelly that of course she didn’t mind if they dated. Okay, so she knows that John is going to date again, but why did he have to choose someone she has to work with? She is not just upset to the point of shaking, but she’s damn angry. I call him all the names I can think of, and we send messages into the night once we get home about what a lowdown insensitive cad of a bounder he is. Frieda doesn’t want to work in banquets anymore, and says she’ll have to leave, that she can’t stay if Kelly and John are going to date.
On Friday, I go into work to work a massive lunch. I speak to Louise, my crewleader (although more senior than John) who does the roster about not rostering John and Frieda on the same shifts for a while, and why. Louise is absolutely furious with John, because as well as adoring Frieda for the sweetheart that she is, she’s also her cousin somehow (yep, this is a damn small place). Next thing Maureen who’s friends with Louise, adores Frieda like the rest of us, and one tough lady gets John on his own, saying that he’s insensitive and why did he have to ask Kelly out but not quite in those terms, if you get my meaning. I’d gone back to uni by this stage, but John denies ever asking Kelly out, and Louise apologises. Later that night I went back to work to work a dinner. I had the pleasure of working with Kelly, who spent the whole night angsting over whether or not to go out with John, to me and another staff member, and to the barman. My advice was ‘if you want to go out with him than just do it.’ I was so sick of her going on about it. Then she starts whining about ‘but if I go out with him Frieda will hate me and everyone else will hate me in banquets’. I just said ‘Frieda doesn’t hate you, and the rest of us won’t think any less of you for it. It just reinforces what we all think about John.’ So she begins to cry, about all of us potentially hating her. For God’s sake, she’s only been there a month and already she’s crying at work.
So, I don’t know whether they went out on that Saturday night, but things I heard on Saturday night let me think that they did. But here’s the thing – who was lying? One of them obviously was. John denies ever asking her out, and four hours later Kelly is debating the pros and cons of going on a date with him tomorrow. Joan, another senior crew leader of mine, put another spin on it. As a supervisor, John should not really be asking out members of staff. After the performance Kelly gave, I tended to think that she had been lying about John asking her out. She was just so damn melodramatic. And she’s so sickly sweet it’s just not right.
So, on Saturday night at about 11.30pm me and a few of my particular girlfriends were having a 15 minute break down in the canteen. Belinda (you may remember her as the girl whose birthday dinner I attended a few weeks ago) shares a particular interesting piece of news that Kelly had told her. Kelly had been dating John, they’d slept together three times. She dumped him because he was too boring and all he ever wanted to do was lay about his house. Kelly is now back with her husband, incidentally. So I guess that answers the question of who was lying, something that we’d all been wondering for a while. It was John.
Being a devoted follower of gossip myself, I pass this news onto my two crewleaders Joan and Louise as we do the cutlery. They’re just as disgusted with John as I am. Not that I had much respect for him to begin with, but I now have no respect for him at all. Belinda comes back over to me, and says ‘oh, I forgot to tell you this earlier. You are just going to love this one.’ John had told Kelly the girls in banquets that he thought liked him. He said that ‘Ruth definitely liked him, and he thought that Cecilia did too. It was the way that Cecilia was a little bit mean to him that made him think that.’ I was gobsmacked. Absolutely gumswizzled. Has this never occurred to him: THE REASON I’M A LITTLE BIT MEAN TO HIM IS BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE HIM? I CANNOT stand the SIGHT of him. I can’t even stand TALKING to him. Obviously, because we work together I have to talk to him on occasion, but I keep it very brief. We never talk unless it’s work related. And then I think I usually have a look of slight distaste on my face, like I can smell something nasty. When I ranted all of this to Joan and Louise, Louise even said ‘you know, that’s true. You never talk to him voluntarily’. Louise stirred me accordingly though. She has vowed that she’s going to go to John and tell him that I’ve requested to be rostered on with him and how does he feel about that? And say that when girls like a boy they sometimes treat them meanly and has he noticed how I treat him. She’s also going to tell Maureen who is the world’s biggest stirrer and has absolutely no idea of how to keep silent on anything at all, and who will most likely be scrawling love notes to John on our kitchen whiteboards and signing them ‘Cecilia’.
I was just shocked at the humungous-ness of John’s head. How can he fit thought doors? Oh, I nearly forgot this little gem as well. On that Saturday night when the girls met him for his birthday, he told Kelly that Sheila tried to kiss him and was dragged off him by an angry Ruth (because Ruth fancies him as well, you remember). Sheila and Ruth both deny that any such thing ever occurred, and never will.
I’m not going to be able to ever speak to John again without thinking about all of this fantasy he has concocted in his head, and will probably blush every time I see him, which will reinforce his belief that I have the hots for him. What makes it even worse is that two years ago, I did like him. I know, I was an idiot back then. But that was before he was promoted and became such a layabout and treated a girl who deserves to be treated like a princess like a piece of fluff. Plus, that was when I was still an undergrad, and my ideas have changed a lot since those days.
BUT all of this rubbish he has spouted is STILL not the reason he is the most despicable piece of human filth I have ever had the displeasure of encountering. Later that night (by now about 2.45am on Sunday) I dropped Belinda off at her house. On the way there we were most naturally discussing all of these fantasies of John’s, and how he’d been shagging Kelly, and generally what an absolute tool he is. Belinda then reveals something else Kelly (melodramatic, putridly syrupy troublemaking trollop that she is) had told her. John had told Kelly things about his and Frieda’s sex life. Belinda didn’t go into details, and I didn’t want to know. But Belinda said that the things he’d told Kelly were extremely intimate personal details about Frieda and the bedroom that no girl would ever want revealed about her, ever. I was disgusted beyond disgust. I felt physically ill that he could do this, and to sweet Frieda. If she knew, she would be absolutely devastated. She’d leave banquets, and she would most likely leave Tasmania. Which would be hard, because she adores her grandparents, and as she’s said before, they’re parents to her. But it must be hard to have parents that you know are most likely going to die while you’re still relatively young, just because they’re so much older than parents. You’d want to spend a lot of time with them.
I’m going to keep John talking about Frieda’s sex life to myself. I definitely don’t want her to go anywhere – she’s such a good influence on me! Plus it would hurt her so much. I have no problem gossiping about Kelly and John doing the deed and even about his fantasies regarding me, Ruth and Sheila. But John breaking the unwritten chivalrous code of not reporting in detail what you did or didn’t do with your girlfriend or exgirlfriend is not gossip material. Although I don’t know how I can possibly work with him knowing what I now know. And if Kelly told Belinda in detail what John had said about Frieda, and Kelly and Belinda aren’t good friends, they’re just people who work together, what has she told her particular friends in the department?
Moral of this story: people who do too much pot are losers and:
Only repulsive slimy odorous pond-scum break the unwritten chivalrous code. |
Ooh, I think I just worked out who John is - would he be your couch-snuggler from a work party a few years back?
He sounds like a revolting, small-penised excuse for a wanker
Is Frieda good at her job? There's a weddings and functions co-ordinator position at Peppermint Bay going - how fun does that sound??