I thought I'd gotten off too lightly when I came back from holidays and
didn't have to face the Cow-orker and her multitude of crises. The Secondary Cow-orker was saving it all up for this afternoon...
She chose this afternoon because she's spent the last two days moping at her own desk in another part of the office, not being able to sit at mine anymore now that I'm back. Adjusting to not being able to pretend that she was in charge has been hard for her, it seems. But with my human workmate away today she couldn't use the excuse that there wasn't anything for her to do in this area, and so she's now trying to do what she should have been doing for the last two days, and compressing it all into one afteroon.
Lucky me. Concentrated stupidity.
Her: I need help with this. Can you look at it?
Her: I can't find the information I need for this? Can you find it for me?
Her: Have you fixed that up yet?
Me: Which one?
Her: The fourth thing I asked you about in five minutes.
Me: No, I'm still working on the first one.
[Pause]
Her: How's this one going?
Me: Which one?
Her: The second one.
Me: No, I haven't been able to get to it yet.
Her: Oh, okay. And I can't finish this paperwork because I don't think this stuff is in the system yet, so I'll just leave it on your desk until you can check it. And I'll leave this other stuff on your desk, too, until you've finished working out all the things I'm having problems with.
[Pause]
Her: Your desk has so much paper on it! And it was so clean this morning!
Wow, my desk is a mess. Fancy that - it's almost like some moron has been running across the room every couple of minutes to dump crap on my desk that they could have taken care of themselves, asked my human workmate about any time over the last few weeks, or done sometime in the last couple of days when the person who initiated a lot of these things was actually here to answer her questions. .
