I battled more idiot drivers and blocked roads on the way to work. It is just annoying. As I merged from Victoria Parade into Victoria Street coming over Hoddle Street, some woman in a Mazda 3 thought she had a god given right to merge into my lane when hers ran out. Yours ran out honey, not mine, she pulled a face and made hand gestures, clearly clueless to the actual road laws, I thought, as I accelerated through.
As I came up to Church Street, a guy in a C Class Mercedes thought the same thing. He swung back into his lane wildly and tooted aggressively when he saw me, er, not giving in to him breaking the road laws. Sorry buddy, but it is the guy who is turning right in front of you who is stopping you, not me in the left lane next to you. Grow up. You little bitch!
I zipped around the back streets after Church Street, heading down Buckingham to Burnley then straight across and straight down, around by Paris Motors. But the street at the end was blocked off.
Bugger. I had to go around.
Cathy was back. She’s kind of a benevolent Fuhrer, she’s nice most of the time, it’s just when she gets strung out. I’m older, I understand how the world weighs you down, but the young girls don’t get it. She’s more like the incredible Hulk, she’s all nicey pie when she is Cathy Banner, but when she gets too strung out, she becomes Cathy The Hulk. Nobody was looking forward to her coming home. They all wanted me to stay. There were even people from outside the team who had noticed enough to comment what a changed place HR was.
Cathy was in a swing style skirt and a bold orange and red see through floral top and bleach blond hair. She’s skinny, she’d lost 14 kilos before she left. She said she’d put on two.
It was interesting watching all the girls sucking up to her. They’d all expressed their trepidation at Cathy returning, they all shuddered at the thought not a few days previously. Here they all were cooing around her telling her how great she looked.
Chicks!
At lunchtime, when we thought all the HR girls were out, Christine said, “Melinda is driving me nuts with all the talking.”
I said, “She seems to be arguing with Isaac (the director) a lot.” Good on her for hutzpah, but really how long do you seriously think you can talk to a director like that, as even tempered as Isaac is.
We said all of that before Cathy shut us up indicating Melinda was at her desk. She was kind of closer to the wall than she normally sits and we just didn’t see her. We just came out and said it with her in the room.
She has that far north Queensland kind of opinionated nasally voice. She is very loud, that is all Christine meant. Sometimes Melinda just doesn’t know when to shut up, that was as bad as Christine meant. Sometimes Melinda just doesn’t know when to shut up, that was as bad as Christine was saying. But Melinda was fragile. Oops. It was a genuine mistake. A big one.
I went to warm up my lunch to get out of there. On my way back, Melinda was coming through the door to the toilet corridor and we had to do that awkward thing at the door as we passed, all the time she wouldn’t look at me.
“Oops,” I said to Christine, went I returned to the office.
“I think she was crying,” said Christine. [Isn't that pretty much what Christians do when they are challenegd)
“Ah, what the hell,” said Cathy.
Melinda came back, after a while, without saying a word. Conversations were changed deftly mid sentence upon her return. You could cut the air with a knife.
She left the office twice more with her head bowed, looking at no one.
We told Shayleen and Jude when they returned and, if anything they seemed a little bemused by what we’d done, smiling at each other like cats.
Chicks. (Jude is a chick. I’ve seen him dancing in black shorts, the material used for which not enough to make a men’s handkerchief)
Oh, Melinda is opinionated and argumentative in that Christian twinset brigade argumentative, she just knows she is right. If ever she stops trying to talk you down from your opinion, she fixes you with her withering gaze that never stops saying I’m right and you are wrong.
Melinda was dark for the rest of the day. She didn’t talk again. When I said good bye to her, she practically dismissed me.
My last day at MMP, it was probably best that I missed the recriminations from that little mistake. Oh, the team will be in turmoil, a team member wounded. But not to worry, Cathy will be there in amongst it all trying to sort it out. Cyborg style. And Natalie, it was a good thing, her arrival in the office is immanent, I think we are now counting down in months. I’d only have to spent a morning with her locked in a confined office and I think I’d snap and kill the bitch. Exit stage left.
Cathy said that I could work to Friday if I wanted, but she really didn’t have any work for me. I was happy to finish and have a couple of pot smoking writing days off. Lovely.
I’ll miss Jude.
I text Guido for pot. He didn’t answer back for some time. When he did, he was out celebrating. He’d be back on deck tomorrow. He’d drop by in the morning.
Sam and I walked to the supermarket.
I kept walking around my circuit for an hour.
We ate stir fried vegetables for dinner.
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