Labels are hard to shed. Reputations can also be hard to shed. Sometimes even rumors can be devastating and ever so destructive. But what if those labels, reputations, and rumors are eventually all proven to be true?
Kyra remains one of, if not the one, coworker of mine that I absolutely loathe the most. She's needlessly loud and boisterous. She can't come into the office quietly and has this tendency to come in damn near every morning on the phone, but with her call "on speaker", for all to hear, whether we want to or not. She laughs incessantly, like every gibberish-laden sentence she utters is somehow pure comedic gold. She really is not that funny, though she'll have you thinking that she's the next Tiffany Haddish (who I have never found to be even remotely funny either). Kyra is similarly not funny. Quite possibly, the worst thing i can say about Kyra is this.
She is not that good at her job.
She isn't. It didn't take long for me to see it. Stevie Wonder could see it. She is downright terrible, not only as a worker in that office, but as a human being as well. Truth be told, I have often hoped that she be struck by a Mack truck and die where she lands, preferably before she even hits the ground. She's taking up space and wasting perfectly good oxygen.
Marlene runs the fleet desk in the office. She is responsible for managing the office's collection of vehicles. I don't know exactly how many cars and vans that is, but if I'm estimating, I'm thinking it's a good 25 to 30. She's responsible for knowing where every vehicle is. She tracks who drove what, when, and for how long, in terms of time of possession and miles traveled.
Marlene documents vehicle damage, inside and out, and she keeps records of maintenance. Her bookkeeping is meticulous, not because she necessarily likes it that way, but because the department mandates it. Marlene keeps the records she does because she has to.
Within the last two weeks, Marlene has fielded complaints regarding two of the vehicles in the fleet. This, in and of itself, is not unusual. She hears all kinds of whining and bitching, some legitimate and sometimes frivolous.
Someone didn't put gas in this car.
Someone left trash in the car.
I left X (where X is something tangible - could be a notebook, cell phone charger, food, cosmetics, damn near anything really) in the car. Can you send an office-wide email to see if anyone found it?
I used to make a joke that I myself have found many spent condoms in some of those vehicles. Well, just one anyway. I'm kidding. None of those vehicles have tinted windows anyway, so why risk it?
Marlene deals with and hears all kinds of complaints, everything from the mundane, all the way to outlandish and dare I say, unfathomable.
About a week or two ago, at least two people approached Marlene and provided her with similar complaints about two different vehicles in the fleet. As much as I'd like to keep the tone of this entry to be adult and even tactful, I think I'll need to break from character and just mimic the exact wording that Marlene provided me.
I'm paraphrasing here, mind you.
Hey Marlene. There's something not right with that car you gave me. I don't know what it is, but that car smells weird.
At first, Marlene didn't think much of it. It wasn't unusual for those kinds of complains to come in. Some workers in our office are sensitive, not only to light, but also to smell. As was her usual, while she didn't disregard the complaint, she didn't immediately go into the fleet parking lot to look into it. She usually took her time looking into these sorts of complaints, if she ever really went at all.
But suddenly, some days later, maybe about a week later, another worker approached her. A very similar complaint would echo through the office's vehicle desk, where Marlene spends her days.
Marlene, that car you gave me has a funny smell. It doesn't smell clean.
Different car, mind you, but with the same odd complaint. Let's just say that this second complaint had definitely piqued her curiosity. Two similar complaints in two weeks' time from two different workers, regarding two different vehicles? Maybe there was something to this after all?
Marlene decided to finally take a "look" for herself. From what I understand, she visited both of these vehicles and basically took a whiff of their interiors. Oh, there was something definitely there. She then checked her records to see who had driven each of these two vehicles. I don't want to say that she was appalled, but maybe, she wasn't ready for what she would discover?
Both vehicles, seemingly driven days apart, just so happened to feature the same, horribly offense scent of what Marlene did not hesitate to refer to quite simply, as "ass". Not that I want to do a deep dive on this, but Marlene went so far as to describe the scent she found in both vehicles, one SUV and the other a small van, as being that of someone who didn't just do a poor job of wiping, but instead, of someone who may have neglected to wash their ass for multiple consecutive days. It was a stale and lingering scent, one that had strongly permeated at least one of those two vehicles.
Marlene checked her books to see who had driven these two vehicles. She didn't want to think that there were at least two workers in that building who shared the same inability to bathe and wash their ass. To her dismay, the same worker had been assigned both vehicles prior to those complaints having been made. Strangely enough, Marlene was not entirely surprised.
Who exactly was that worker?
It just so happened that Kyra was THAT worker.
Dirty bitch that Kyra.
I suppose I wasn't too surprised either, in that I have reached a point where anytime her name is associated to anything dumb or negative that happens in the office, it no longer surprises me.
Kyra doesn't wash her ass. Yes, I am not surprised. Her scent managed to "damage" two of the vehicles in the fleet, both of which will now likely require some form of professional detailing and all on the department's dime. Maybe the power of her stench surprises me a little? That's some pretty powerful funk there, to where people (myself included) are unwilling to drive either of those two vehicles, even after they're professionally cleaned.
So, now what happens in the aftermath of this whole situation?
Well, as you read earlier when I started this entry, labels are hard to shed. Reputations can also be hard to shed.
As far as I'm concerned, Kyra's on the same level at the bubonic plague.
Kyra doesn't smell right. If I ever ask to be assigned a vehicle from Marlene, I have to explicitly request that she NOT give me anything that Kyra may have driven or even sat in. Every time I look at Kyra or even at her cubicle (empty or occupied), I will think to myself, "Damn, that bitch stinks". I'm also just going to assume that her cubicle also smells like open ass, to where now, I will avoid walking by it. I'd hate to be sitting in an adjacent cubicle to hers. Before, it was because I couldn't stand the sight and sound of her, but now, I have another, more painful and offensive reason...
Kyra smells like ass.
Dirty bitch.
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