Jackpot!

I don't play the lottery, but that didn't stop me from hitting the jackpot yesterday.  In a previous post, Fear The Mullet, I promised that I would capture a video of the nearby mullet-sporting cube-dweller as she played Farmville and fielded personal phone calls while on the clock.  It took me almost a month, but I'm proud to report that the stars finally aligned yesterday afternoon.

Don't get me wrong; the past few weeks have seen no shortage of personal phone calls and plenty of Farmville and Facebook in her cubicle.  I just wasn't lucky enough to be at my desk when the two events occurred simultaneously and there were few enough people around that I could pull the phone out and start recording.  But everything finally came together yesterday afternoon.

Farmville was up on her screen (though she was so deeply engrossed in her personal conversation that she wasn't actually playing it), and she was chatting away with a person that I later deduced must be one of her offspring.  And I'm proud to report that you're in for a bonus treat with this video--it includes a rather graphic description of some kind of personal medical problem!

The only sad part is that the sound didn't record very well in this video.  Turn the volume all the way up for this one...the sound gets at least marginally better by the end:



It's really too bad the sound didn't come out better, because the gravelly, squeaky sound of her voice pierces the air like nails on a chalkboard when you're sitting nearby.  And the dialog was epic, with her describing the amount of pus that came out when she squeezed some kind of sore on her body (sadly, that part's at the beginning of the video and really tough to hear).

Near the end of the clip, right around the 1:00 mark, mullet woman describes to the person on the phone how one of her stitches recently surfaced "...from when you were born.  On my...."  Thank god she didn't finish that sentence!  I don't want to know what kind of relationship they have in that family, as she goes on to say "when you came over, I was going to show you!"  (You'll notice the video abruptly ends shortly thereafter, as I was leaning over a trash can vomiting.)

Interestingly, this video was shot on the same day that the company announced a major restructuring, complete with a massive wave of layoffs.  I wondered what this woman thought of the bad news...surely if the company is looking to trim some fat from the admin budget, the first place to look is the cubicle where the only output is gossip, games, and idle internet surfing.  But it turns out that I didn't have to wonder what she was thinking very long, because as soon as the news broke, she was on the phone with her friends sharing every detail.

Apparently she's not at all worried about getting laid off because she's been with the company since the dawn of time and is close to retirement.  She actually welcomed the prospect of a severance package to help send her on her way.  Just as I had suspected all along, she views herself as impervious to the pink slip...and sure enough, the day was chock full of Farmville and phone calls, including the one captured in the delightful video clip above.

On a side note, I have to wonder what was going through the minds of the people who happened to walk by during those glorious seventy-three seconds that I spent standing in my neighbor's cubicle filming the crazy person at the desk a few feet away.  This clearly demonstrates my commitment to this blog--I risked both my personal and professional reputations as well as my life; if that woman glanced behind her during my recording session, my shotgun-wound-induced funeral couldn't have been far away.

But anyway...I think everyone involved in this situation is sitting on the cusp of a gigantic win-win-win proposition here.  It's rare that a company can lose an employee and realize significant productivity gains spanning an entire department.  Crazy mullet woman gets her prized severance package and bolts for the exit; someone much smarter and more motivated, skilled, and valuable is spared their job; everyone in vicinity of mullet woman's cubicle is able to redirect the effort they wasted ignoring her phone calls to completing their work. 

She may welcome the pink slip, but I'm willing to bet she'd come crawling back begging for a job as soon as she realized that the phone connection and internet speed back at the trailer aren't what she's become accustomed to...