Hai. I'm an asshole.

I believe in fair warning, so I have been known to tell my co-workers that I'm sort of a jerk. That way, when I do something jerky (like watch you knock over a stack of charts and then say "hey, you dropped something"), no one is surprised.

I AM a professional, mostly, so I try to keep my dislike of co-workers to myself. Or at least, I try not to make it OBVIOUS. Ahem. But there's always one, you know? That one co-worker who makes it realllly hard to like them. For whatever reason. And maybe this co-worker is not a horrible person, but for some reason, you just...can't. I cannot stand her. I am completely aggravated by her and I really have a hard time hiding it. Let's call her the nickname that I've given her already: Noxeema Jackson. And this is REALLY what she looks like: Wesley Snipes, in a dress. And I imagine that she gets dressed in the morning for work like this.

Recently, she's taken to trying to become my BFF, for no reason I can imagine. We had a staff meeting where she made it a point to ask me about some random thing that I did several months ago, that she had already asked me about when she called me about some equally unimportant thing, several months ago. She's invited me to come to her apartment and lay by her pool, to go go-karting, to go the jazz festival...blah, blah.BLAH. Every time I have to send an (work-related) e-mail to her, she tries to make it personal and/or attempts to invite me to her kid's basketball game. Every conversation, which is as rare as I can make it, she finds a way to bring her deceased husband of five or so years into the conversation. She tries to convince me, and everybody else that she was a model in her younger years (please see: Wesley Snipes in a dress. Also, nope.com)

So the other day, our department was "strongly encouraged" (read: not mandatory, but really kinda is) to attend some award ceremony, as one of our co-workers was receiving a fancy award. Toward the end, I decide to cut out with a couple of other co-workers (the newlywed and the mouse) because a) it had already been an hour and a half b) my co-worker had already received her award and c) I was tired of listening to this long ass award ceremony that wasn't even HALF over yet. And I see Noxeema get up as I walk past to catch up with me out of the corner of my eye (I would never look directly at her because she would take that as an invitation to engage, which...it wasn't).

I start walking faster. Because Noxeema is also an AMAZON, she is catching up quick. But I am smarter; so I know she's not going to scream my name while in front of all of these people and so I can pretend like I didn't see her since I didn't look directly at her. While I still have the head start, I cut into the bathroom around a corner before she can catch up to me. And while, I'm there, I decide to, you know...pee. So when she peeked in, she didn't see me. As I'm finishing, the mouse comes in and tells me that she DID come in looking for me, but is gone now. The Newlywed says that I disappeared but when she turned around Noxeema was standing there. And then I had to admit that I sorta ditched her by hiding in the can.

I feel a little bad because I know that she's trying, for whatever reason. And I don't make it easy. But I really don't wanna make nice unless it's absolutely necessary, i.e. Staff Meetings. And when I see her in staff meetings, I am almost the epitome of professional, and attempt to keep all smartassy comments to myself.

Except one:

I'll see you later, unless I see you first.


(see? I told you. I'm an asshole.)