Nice receptionist. I should know. I've been one.The day started well as Simon Pegg (remember him?) was on GMTV this morning - many thanks to the fabulous El Clark for texting to tip me off. Even my visit to the dentist couldn't spoil it. Although their receptionist could have. My dentist has recently got a new receptionist and frankly, she's a bitch. She's rude, indiscreet, passive-agressive, rude, loud, did I mention rude? These qualities would normally endear me to a woman - like attracts like - except for one thing.
She is only nasty to other women.
That fact bites me, it bites me hard. And not in a good way. You put a man in front of the Alpha Harpy and suddenly she's this self-deprecating, cooing, overly-polite and falsely caring person. As I watched her this morning (for almost 40 minutes, my dentist was running late and I didn't take a book so I needed to read something), I felt my resentment rising as she barely made eye contact with a series of perfectly polite and inoffensive women (me not included, obviously, but there were others) yet almost oozed clean off her chair for any human with a dangly appendage.
I tried to empathize, and imagined a series of awful things that could have happened in this woman's life to make her this way. However, after about five minutes of that I realised I wasn't empathizing, I was enjoying the exercise. In the end, I did the only thing I ever do with people puzzles I cannot solve. I psychically dissolved her presence from the/my (either/or) Universe until I can figure out her problem and thus prevent it making me impotently angry.
I am fairly practiced at this: it involved a very clear will to disengage with someone and then to stop perceiving them. Usually I do this by leaving their environment, but in this instance she had to serve me later, so I spent the whole interaction looking at her right eyebrow and visualising a young, polite, red-haired woman who looked a bit like Jessica Stephenson (I told you I've been watching too much Spaced lately).
She was a lot more pleasant to deal with as a result. Well, technically, she seemed a bit bewildered and as I left, she was frantically rubbing at her right eyebrow.
Here's Terra Naomi, who you might recognise from a previous post. This one is called Vicodin, and thanks to Kit Kat for finding it for us. Doesn't it just capture the painful glory of the substance abuser?
She is only nasty to other women.
That fact bites me, it bites me hard. And not in a good way. You put a man in front of the Alpha Harpy and suddenly she's this self-deprecating, cooing, overly-polite and falsely caring person. As I watched her this morning (for almost 40 minutes, my dentist was running late and I didn't take a book so I needed to read something), I felt my resentment rising as she barely made eye contact with a series of perfectly polite and inoffensive women (me not included, obviously, but there were others) yet almost oozed clean off her chair for any human with a dangly appendage.
I tried to empathize, and imagined a series of awful things that could have happened in this woman's life to make her this way. However, after about five minutes of that I realised I wasn't empathizing, I was enjoying the exercise. In the end, I did the only thing I ever do with people puzzles I cannot solve. I psychically dissolved her presence from the/my (either/or) Universe until I can figure out her problem and thus prevent it making me impotently angry.
I am fairly practiced at this: it involved a very clear will to disengage with someone and then to stop perceiving them. Usually I do this by leaving their environment, but in this instance she had to serve me later, so I spent the whole interaction looking at her right eyebrow and visualising a young, polite, red-haired woman who looked a bit like Jessica Stephenson (I told you I've been watching too much Spaced lately).
She was a lot more pleasant to deal with as a result. Well, technically, she seemed a bit bewildered and as I left, she was frantically rubbing at her right eyebrow.
Here's Terra Naomi, who you might recognise from a previous post. This one is called Vicodin, and thanks to Kit Kat for finding it for us. Doesn't it just capture the painful glory of the substance abuser?
1 comment:
I used to have a boss like this, foul to the ladies but doting over the men-folk, wish I'd tried this, in the end she vanished one day, no one knew if she was promoted or fired she was thhat split down the middle!
Loving the writing babycakes!!
H x
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