Sunday, October 21, 2007

Awkward Affinity

She seemed like a very nice girl when Jan first started working in Public Communications. The only thing off about her was how she interacted with all the other people she worked with. Despite being in a department where the sole purpose was to communicate, words between her and her collegues were kept to a minimum. She seemed to disappear during lunch while no one was looking and then to sneak back in before anyone else got back.

After getting to know all six other team members, Jan wanted to at least introduce herself to this girl in the far corner by the broom closet. She spoke to Tim about the idea first. Tim was a balding middle-aged man that always had mustard on his dress shirt, no matter if it was 9 am or 9pm. They both prefered black coffee over fancy italian drinks and owned the same model hybrid car.


"I almost forgot she works here", he first said in response to her query about whether to speak to the lonely girl. That is what Jan began to call her in her mind, the Lonely Girl.


"She's been here for almost three years now. She's a little nuts... Laughs at the strangest things", he said, scratching his nose. Tim's nose was often itchy when he had something to say.


"What do you mean by that? Did she laugh while running down a dog or while in the washroom stall or something?"


"Oh, no! Nothing like that... She just has the most odd sense of humour and it makes for very awkward conversation. So we all just kind of avoid her."

Jan was a little upst by this.

"You mean to tell me that everyone in the Com department avoids this girl and does not invite her to lunch because she has a tendancy to make conversations awkward?" Jan questioned furiously. She was so angered, her voice was very close to almost rising above the average whisper level used in office type settings. Tim of course, seemed to think that awkward conversations were very unpleasant and so he harumphed and swiveled his desk chair back to it's computer tasking position without answering her.


The next day, Jan was very determined to make her best effort at including Lonely Girl in some sort of social activity and so, she baked a big chocolate cake. To Jan, the best way to get several business type people with too much to say together and have them not say anything at all is to have them conglomerate around twenty five thousand calories.


Arriving at work, she set down the cake on the break table and waited for free-food-intuition to bring her co-workers to her and to form a social setting. It was rather fast and before she really realized that Lonely Girl wasn't there too, Tim was on his second piece.


She strode past the row of cubicles and sought out Lonely Girl. She was sitting down at her computer and it honestly looked like she was doing actual work for her job.


"Hi!...There's cake", Jan stammered, so blown away that Lonely Girl was not slacking off or spacing out or on Facebook.


Lonely Girl kept a steady gaze on her writing and without really bothering to check who had spoken she replied, "I'm a vegan ; I don't eat eggs or milk".


Jan felt like kicking herself.


Lonely Girl was actually named Meredith Alarming and she liked her job. She loved to answer questions she knew the answers to and to speak to the people who phoned her. She loved these people because they were the main source of all her entertainment. Meredith loved puns and the people who phoned her were so consistantly full of contradiction and unintentional hilarity she could hardly tear herself away for lunch or sleep. Before Jan left to clean up her cake plate, Meredith turned in her swivel chair and looked at her. She began to smile and then outright giggle. Meredith had noticed that Jan had a pencil behind her ear and that it was dull. Jan wasn't really sure what was going on.

"What's so funny?"

"Your pencil. I wouldn't write with it."

"Why's that..."

"It's pointless."

Jan couldn't help but think what a terrible play on words she'd just walked into but couldn't help but smirk (just a little).
"So how do vegans eat?" Asked Jan.
"With a knife and fork, i guess."
They both kind of chuckled.

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