Good enough for government work

The cubicle work environment is a unique one, in that you can not know the person next to you at all, never even say hello to each other in the hallway, and simultaneously know every possible detail about their personal life and daily routine. Our office here at the VA DCR has a pretty random smattering of characters. I seem to have picked the cubicle corner most likely to be avoided by seasoned employees. In the cubicle in front of me is a woman, let’s call her – Polly. I’m sure she’s a very nice person, not to her customers, and certainly not to any of the other people she seems to call during the course of the work day, but certainly, at least, to her cats. Who, by all accounts she cherishes, and enjoys looking at potential new adoptees online during her down time, and reading their descriptions aloud for those of us in the vicinity. In fact, my other two cube neighbors, Omar and Flo, are currently discussing Polly, who is in the manager’s office trying to get the day off due to her alleged poison ivy, an ailment which she has been on the phone discussing with the free clinic all morning – sometimes in tears - , and from which she feels she could imminently die, since no one will help her. Flo says she’s a “hippo-chondriac.” Flo is hands down my favorite person in the office. She’s got to be at least mid to late 60’s, she’s partially deaf and blind in one eye. She probably weighs about 89 lbs, but she knows how to cuss out a difficult customer the second she’s off the line with them. When I was training with her and listening in on her calls one customer called in to make a reservation and asked -
“How are you?”.
Flo freaked out “Excuse me! What did you just say to me?”
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what the hell am I’”
“Um….? I said ‘How are you?’”
“Oh, ok, I thought you said something else.”
I could only just shake my head and try not to laugh.
She also has no problem telling Omar, who fancies himself to be quite the pimp/ thug, exactly how it is. My favorite Flo/ Omar exchanges occurred while Flo was training Omar. Omar has a rubber neck, the kind that can snap around at absurd angles if a young female happens to be around, so he can ‘holla’ at them. Flo asked him if he was in school. “Yeah,” he responded. “What are you studying, womanizing?” “Nah, nah, Flo. It’s called pimpology.” “Well then, you must be flunking out, huh?”
Another time Omar was amazed to discover that one of the girls in the office didn’t know who James Brown was. Because Flo is old and Caucasian Omar presumed she didn’t know who James Brown was either. Flo proceeded to school him on James Brown’s life, music, and career. She even added that she now enjoys watching Chris Brown when he’s on the MTV. Once, when Omar was giving Flo a hard time in the hallway she put up her fists and danced around him, telling him she could fight him. Omar just laughed and told her to go back to her cubicle because he wasn’t handicapped accessible. But in reality they’re good, if unlikely, friends. Flo watches out for all of Omar’s (numerous) mistakes on the reservations phone line, and tries to impart the occasional tidbit of life advice. Omar even declared the other day that the reason Flo is called Flo is because of the wisdom that flows across the cubicle wall to him. Omar for his part tries to introduce to Flo to pop culture expressions and hip hop dance moves.
But I am still moved to wonder about the efficacy of my co-workers. Omar doesn’t have the memory banks for all of the necessary state park reservations policy and info. I routinely hear him telling people that no, that’s not a state park and he can’t make a reservation for it, and I have to lean across the cubicle wall and whisper “Pssssst, yes that is a state park and you can make reservations for it.” Or other such mix-ups about prices, policies and locations. Omar also specializes in mouth percussion when he gets bored, sometimes it’s quite talented and other times it just sounds like intermittent sucking and farting noises. Or sometimes he just makes animal noises, like howling, money screams. That’s government work for you.
Polly for her part is just generally unhelpful to her customers. She claims she gets all the difficult people, but she seems to find a way to get into an argument with practically every customer that calls. I sometimes wonder about the random actions of the universe that direct a specific person to Polly’s line instead of mine. Little do they know how easy the process could have been… She has the most ridiculous southern, trailer park accent. The letter ‘R’ is pronounced “r-ah’ or “r-oh” when she spells things out, and she always says “minium” instead of “minimum”. This particularly bugs me because I know she can hear all the rest of us around her saying “minimum” and I know it’s printed on her computer screen and call script as “minimum,” but still everyone who gets Polly gets informed of the 2 nt “mineeum” stay. A pedestal grill is also a “pedestrian” grill for Polly. Polly is by far the loudest talker in the office. You can hear her from anywhere on the floor. Sometimes I can’t even hear the person on my phone line. But I can always hear her perfectly. This is why we are all intimately acquainted with her boyfriend troubles, cat’s ailments, health insurance issues, vacation plans, and every creditor she has occasion to talk to during the course of the day. She seems to always be arguing with these people. My favorite is when she says “I’m not arguing with you, trust me, I’m not, but…” Or when the person on the other end of the line starts to get snippy back, then she’ll say, “ I wasn’t being smart with you why you gotta start being smart with me. I wasn’t rude, but you was rude…” Oh well, I hope she gets a break sometime soon.