Goodbye Ferret Face!

For those of you who may not know I work for a large insurance company and was recently promoted to a new position. Essentially I am doing a similar job to the one I had before except for a different line of business. To give you a little background there has been significant turnover in the department I recently joined. This has been due to upper management moving the department from another office to the one I work in, and scaling back on staff due to declines in the business. The manager that had run the department for a number of years was fired 2 years ago and the manager who replaced him quit 8 months ago. Needless to say our customers have been a bit uneasy about all of the changes. Before leaving manager #2 filled one of the vacant positions. I respect manager # 2 a great deal and had a very good relationship with her before she left. Having said that I don’t know what she was smoking when she hired the woman who took the position.

This woman was the epitome of weird. She would not talk to anyone. If she sat in the cube next to you she would send you an email. When she was forced to talk to you she was very short and you had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. You would ask her a simple question and get a wacked out answer that had nothing to do with what you had asked. Ironically enough her initials are M.A.D. Believe me they could not be more appropriate. The following is a typical exchange between us.

(Enter A.S.S. from left)

A.S.S. – Did you finish the monthly reports?

(M.A.D. swivels in chair to face A.S.S.)

M.A.D. (shuffles some papers on her desk then gestures toward the computer making an L out of her index finger and thumb.) Did you look on the share drive?

A.S.S. – ? huh?

M.A.D. – In this department we put all reports on the share drive.

(Please keep in mind that the department consists of just the two of us. In the past they had 12 people and had kept track of each others work by updating their progress on a spreadsheet kept on a central drive.)

A.S.S. – So is that a yes?

M.A.D. – I’ll email you the link to the share drive.

A.S.S. – M.A.D., I don’t care about the share drive. I just need to know if you finished the reports!

M.A.D. – I was at the printer earlier and it was out of toner.

(A.S.S. turns, walks out, grumbles %#^#$#%^% and seeks out the nearest other M.A.D. hater to vent to)

Eventually I learned how to ask leading questions to get the information I needed by asking leading yes or no questions.

A.S.S. – M.A.D., my understanding is that you have finished the reports. Is that correct?

Even this was a painful undertaking.

Now admittedly I am not the most tolerant person around. Normally you might be able to say: "A.S.S., come on you know how you are. She’s not that bad." I assure you SHE IS! This woman has alienated every person in the office. Even the nice people hate her. On top of that she is hated by our clients. I have had to take over multiple accounts because they did not want to deal with her.

On top of everything else she was always calling out. We do not have sick days at my company. All days are PTO (Paid Time Off) and you can use them for whatever you want. However, you can only call out ten times a year. All other days must be scheduled. Last week she called out for the tenth time and was put on written warning. Now, my boss is a little strange himself but he is a pretty reasonable guy. He would never just put someone on warning without trying to get to the root of the problem. He even asked her probing questions to avoid having to do it.

Boss – Are you having heath issues? You don’t have to tell me what they are but is there some way we can work together to resolve this? If there is something else going on let me know. I want to help you.

M.A.D. – At my old company people wore jeans on Friday.

(Boss turns, walks away, grumbles %#^#$#%^% and seeks out the nearest other M.A.D. hater to vent to)

He was forced to put her on written warning. She called out again a couple of days ago and he let her go. This was perhaps the greatest day of my career thus far. I have had some great sales, fantastic raises and performance reviews but none of them have given me the same satisfaction of knowing her butt is never coming back!

Now you might be saying to yourself “yeah A.S.S. I know she was bad but it’s sad when someone loses their job. It’s really not something to celebrate.” Normally I would agree with you but FUCK that! This lady had it coming. I guess it comes down to this:

If you work in an office you can be as dumb as you want as long as you are a nice person. People will say “man she dumb but isn’t she sooooo nice. I mean we can teach her how to do something. I’ll train her again. She’ll get it eventually.”

Or you can be exceptional at you job and be a complete bitch. People might then say “Man is she a bitch but you have to respect her. She really knows her stuff! You know what? I can completely take the bad side if she keeps performing like that!”

If this woman had fit into either one of the above scenarios she would still be employed. This was not the case. This woman was the worst possible combination; dumb and mean. The long and short of it is that you cannot be dumb and mean and expect to keep your job.

If you remember the show M.A.S.H. there was a doctor on the show named Frank Burns who fit this description. He was always reporting the other doctors and being a general jerk. Not only that but he was the worst doctor in camp. When he finally went insane and left the show the other doctors got out a bottle of scotch and enthusiastically toasted his departure. I quote their toast now.

“Goodbye Ferret Face!”