today was a pretty fucked up day.
i'm working on a project with this one other manager. she's not in my direct chain of command per se. but i'm working with her on putting together a report that's going to be filed with the court and given to various parties involved in litigation with my department.
this is the first time i've ever worked with this manager. until i formally met her, like, a month ago, she was kind of like a ghost. she moved in and out of the building quietly. she didn't talk to anyone. although a manager, she did not supervise any staff at ALL. when she arrived at work, she would go to her office, shut the door, and leave it closed all day until it was time to go home. what she did between those hours of arrival and departure, i'll be completely damned if i know.
and then recently, her ostracism, whether self-imposed or not, was slowly beginning to be erased. she was given a new project to work on by the new head honcho. her first real assignment, i believe, in a long while.
she undertook the project with great enthusiasm, i am told. now, the project was something that my boss and i had worked on before, but it was one that my boss had gotten sick of and wanted to move away from. but he stayed on the project in an advisory capacity and also as a minor contributor. and he promised her, "hey, if you need any help, you can ask abbagirl to assist you. just check with her to see if it'd be all right."
i agreed and began working with her.
and now that it's been a few weeks that i've been working with her, i must say. . . .
that bitch is fucking crazy!
O_O
i'd heard inklings before from others, both managers and staff, that this woman was not right in her head. that she was sensitive and tended to personalize any kind of unflattering comment or criticism, even if such meaning was not intentional. i defended her to those other people and to myself.
but today, for-friggin'-get it!
she's CRAZY!
we had a moment today, behind the closed door of her office, when all her craziness came through. she'd heard/suspected that not everything was going well with the report -- or that recent drafts had not been well-received by certain other members of management who had reviewed them. so today, she unleashed all the things she felt -- that these people were out to get her, they were being nit-picky on purpose, there was a secret agenda, they wanted her to fall on her face.
me -- when i hear someone get all self-centered and all woe-is-me, the objective peacemaker in me comes out. so i tried to placate her, try to make her understand other people's positions, tried to be rational . . .
but she wouldn't hear it!
instead, she got TOTALLY pissed and began yelling and ranting and raving at me, and her face got this maniacal, crazy expression, and her eyes glazed over. i mean, i knew she wasn't yelling at me personally. i could see that when she looked at me, she was not seeing me per se. i was just a convenient target for all the years of hurt and jealously and sensitivity she's been nursing for, like, ever.
but i did NOT like what i saw. i did NOT like being yelled at. i did NOT like dealing with someone who wasn't open to criticism. i did NOT like seeing that she had no room in her mind to hear other perspectives. i did NOT like being with this crazy assed person, period.
at one point, i even said, quite loudly, i'm afraid, since she wouldn't shut the fuck up, "you know, i don't have anything to do with this. i just edit whatever i'm given and i fix the language. i'm not --" i thought if i pointed out to her that i wasn't the one who had the criticism, then she'd just shut up and direct her venom to the people who did have issues and that she would just talk to them about it.
but she said, "i KNOW you don't have anything to do with them, but --" and she just kept on going. she was furious. she was trying to justify why the report, the way she had gone and done it, was accurate and good. she was whipping her own self in a frenzy with her venomous passion and obvious hatred for those particular other managers.
so i stopped talking. when i saw that she had just gone stark raving mad, i shut up. i nodded blankly, but mostly as a way to get her to hurry up, get those feelings out of her system, and move on. it took a while. and then we were kind of able to move on.
but in terms of me being able to deal with her anymore, FORGET IT. HELL no!
so that session ruined me for the day. ideally, it should have been a short five to ten minute meeting with her whereby she could give me my instructions and to-do list and then i could get out of there to get started on my tasks.
but it was a 45 minute meeting. 5% of the meeting was filled with actually things pertinent to our project. 95% of it was filled with me trying to soothe her ego and be her therapist and ending up being friggin' verbally attacked.
ugh. seriously, i have lost all respect for that crazy-assed woman.
i went back to my boss right after. i was pissed and upset, and i wanted to tell him what had happened. as i vented to him, i said emphatically, "i DON'T think i can do this again for next time. i like the project and would love to keep going on with it, but not with her. i don't want to do this again." and my boss just laughed. he laughed for a good while. he had known what she was like, and i guess he knew it would be a matter of time before i found out as well. i suppose it amused him that even mild-mannered me could exceed my limits with that shrew.
now, all of a sudden, i am hearing from other managers that, yes, the woman is crazy. as in certifiably, clinically CRAZY. i didn't tell them about her going ballistic on me, so that's not the reason for the candidness. rather, they only just recently found out that i was working with her. and their reactions were astounding. all of them have rather coincidentally used the same word over and over when it comes to describing her:
C R A Z Y
just makes me go, "well, GEE! NOW you tell me!!"
grrrr!
>:-(
:-T
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