Tiny Tape

You work overtime on a project and whenever your boss asks for a little something extra to be done you graciously accept the task. However, your co-worker does not put in the same effort, but will falsely say that he will get his part of a project done on time and has great ideas to input.

You ask your co-worker to handle one section of the project and he agrees, but in reality he is playing finger football in his cubicle.

This co-worker is said to have a passive-aggressive personality. He is fine with the bare minimum, which can irritate both management and staff. How do you handle this type of co-worker?

I have no idea. Because in publishing everyone is on deadline and overachieving, willing to impress the higher ups. You either get it done or get the boot. However, Company A (the first publishing company I worked at) has its own passive-aggressive personality.

Our office is a mostly female demographic (either middle-aged and single, or newbie young professional), especially at the lower end of the ladder. There are some men mostly in management positions.

There is no water cooler, but we find time to chit chat throughout the day at each others’ cubicles. Just the typical gossip about the marketing manager who slept her way to the top and how we shouldn’t have had those shots of bourbon at last nights happy hour. Nothing too suspect and nothing that anyone else would really hear in ear shot?

At least we thought. Someone posted a sign up near our group of cubicles that stated “Would you still be having this conversation if your mother could hear you?” Ah ha, we discovered the publishing industry passive-aggressive personality.

We were not sure who posted the sign, so we had to investigate. Editors have a keen eye for detail; it’s part of the job. So, it’s not surprising that one of us noticed that the sign was posted with tape that was much thinner than any of the tape in the dispensers on our desks.

We scoured the office, looking in each cubicle, for the dispenser with the different tape. Finally, we found him, “Tiny Tape”.

He was a contract employee, a former college mathematics professor who now dealt in customer service for our technology products. And he was… bitter. Bitter about having a cubicle and not an office. Bitter about being surrounded by young females who take part in debauchery.

Of course, none of us make mention of his phone calls to his wife who he keeps kept. “You didn’t leave the house today did you?” “Remember to lock the doors.”

I suppose we could go to Human Resources to tattle. Or we could be aggressive and confront him on his sign and watch him shrivel up into a passive mess. But, we all figured it would be much more fun to continue our conversations, a little bit louder.

Of course, keeping the content prudish so we would not be embarrassed for our mothers to hear…