My friend told me a story about some workplace drama one of his coworkers was involved in—a story I would have found totally amusing had it not set off my Potential Psycho Alarm.
As the name suggests, my Potential Psycho Alarm is triggered by people who are barely balancing the fine line between extreme creepiness and crazy-ass-wielding-a-samurai-sword-in-the-middle-of-Disneyland. It doesn’t go off very often because I don’t live in Florida, so on those rare occasions when it does, you can bet I’m not taking that sh*t lightly.
With this recent alarm, however, I’m not quite if it was triggered because my friend’s coworker has genuine psycho potential, or because I’ve been binging on the Investigation Discovery channel, which has a lineup entirely dedicated to shows about famous murder investigations (super interesting stuff!). So I’m going to share the story with you to see if your Potential Psycho Alarm goes off. If it doesn’t, then I need to cut the cable cord. If it does, then–hmm…then I’ll just draw some more Paint pictures and ask you guys what I should do next.
In this telling, I will be using Apple, Orange, and Pear to illustrate the pivotal moments.
Apple is the coworker and the star of this story. He’s not very good at socializing with people, and is even less skilled at attracting women. He recently took up photography, and spends his weekends going to clubs and trying to convince drunk girls to model for him (Holy crap! Did your Potential Psycho Alarm go off when you read that sentence too?!). Wait, it gets better! Before becoming a “photographer,” Apple used to be a “party promoter.” Oh please. Everyone knows that “party promoter” is just a fancy way of saying “douche bag who sticks party fliers on your windshield.”
Anyway, the apple of Apple’s eye (hahaha…ugh…) is Orange, the office receptionist. Apple has been trying to woo Orange for awhile now by asking her repeatedly, “Are you busy this weekend?” He has occasionally given up and turned his attention to Orange’s friends and family, whose pictures she keeps on her desk. But in the end, his heart always returns to Orange.
Pear is Apple’s project manager. The company they work for does financial projections or something for businesses, and employees are grouped into teams. My friend, Apple, and a few other people are all on Pear’s team.
Because the company had been renovating half of the office building, the entire workforce was crammed into the other half. And in order to make everyone fit, they ended up putting desks in the break rooms and reception area (I imagine it looked kind of like the setup on “The Office,” but way more crowded).The workspace for Pear’s team was in the reception area, and Apple’s desk was adjacent to Orange’s. Yeah, I know: dun…dun…dun!
Okay, so all this drama went down when the company announced last week that the renovations were complete, and the teams that had been displaced by the construction would be moved back to the other half of the building.
After Pear left, Orange tried to talk some sense into Apple…
Yes, he was not going to move under any circumstances, even if it cost him his job.
Having cut ties with his old team, Apple started making the rounds to all the other project managers in the company and asking them if he could join their teams. No one, however, would take him on. In fact, they actually all told him he was being unreasonable.
There is no way you could have heard that story without your Potential Psycho Alarm going off in your head. Apple is crazy! All Pear was asking him to do was move to the office down the hall, but he reacted as if he was being told that the company was relocating him to Syria! Syria!
This situation screams impending workplace violence, and I told my friend that he should be careful. But he thought I was overreacting because “Apple’s not like that.” Well that’s really comforting. What’s the most common thing people say when they are interviewed after someone they know has committed mass murder? “He didn’t see like the type.”
So…was my Potential Psycho Alarm a false alert?
P.S. Pretend the purple box is a bunch of grapes. I got lazy…sorry…
Recent Comments