It's Vestigial

I have this colleague at work who is relatively unreliable and lately, she has been getting more and more "creative" with her excuses to leave work early.



Being stuck in the same duty group as her, I always have the unfortunate joy of hearing her reasons for either being unable to report for work that day, or having to leave early, she has also never arrived on time, always only appearing after lunch when she decides she wants to come.




If my colleagues in my group have job sites to run, then their absence would be understandable, but she doesn't, all her excuses for having to leave early are always personal reasons like...

"I have a dinner appointment with my friend today, so I will be leaving early."

"My friend will be flying off soon and I want to have one last meal with her before she leaves."

"I have to attend a Yoga class today."

....if you have to schedule a dinner appointment with your friend once on the day you are suppose to have your duty due to an oversight on your part, then fine, as long as you make sure to schedule it outside of your duty schedule the next time, I can understand, but doing it every single duty and expecting me to believe it was all an "accidental" arrangement,  please go and fuck yourself if you think I would actually be that stupid to believe you.




One time, she decided she wanted to leave early during a weekend shift because she just didn't feel like staying till closing, so she validated herself by telling me...

"There are so many people in the office now. Leaving now shouldn't be an issue"

... and then just packs her stuff and leaves, dropping me a message 5 minutes later telling me...

"This will be the last time I leave early, next time I will be sure to stay till closing with you."

... I was speaking to my clients at that time, so it was a really dirty move on her part to make her exit when I was busy and needless to say, by the time it was 6.30pm, "so many people" were all done speaking to their clients and had left, leaving me alone in the office from 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm, and that was when I had to deal with the self proclaimed Interior Designer from Taiwan who had a few loose screws in her brain.




About a week ago, out of desperation, I decided to ask her if she could help me overlook my site while I was away for my reservist in August, thinking that if she agreed, I could maybe share a small portion of my profit margin with her, about $200- $300, which I thought was pretty generous seeing how I wasn't going ask her to run my entire project, just overlook for 2 to 3 days when I was away.



Before I could share with her my intended reward for her help, she goes...

"Yeah, sure, it would be good for me to learn how to run a project as well, then we split the profit 50-50."

50/50 profit is normally shared by 2 designers who have contributed equally to a project, one person who closed the deal and came up with the design proposal will get 50% and the other person who runs the site from start to finish will get the other 50%.

I am the one who closed the deal with my client.

I am the one who came up with their design proposal.

I am the one who will be running a majority of the project site.

So.... ummm.... Excuse me?
Are you fucking insane?

The project will take about 6 weeks to complete and out of this 6 weeks, I am only expecting her to help me overlook 2 to 3 days worth of renovation works, where she will probably only show up for 1 day seeing how her track record at work has been for the past few months, and she expects 50% of the profit, girl is crazy if she thinks I am alright with arrangement.

Of course I was not agreeable, so I went to enlist the help of my senior colleague and he was able to relate to my issue because he is also Singaporean and has to go through the same shit every year, when I offered him monetary incentives for his help, he goes..

"Don't need, since the site is so near to our office, it won't be too much of an inconvenience for me, I will help you overlook the site for the few days while you are away, then I will update you via Whatsapp with the photos as well."

... such a generous heart, and so I offered to buy him a meal in return, but that request has since become invalid because I have decided to push the project forward and am now in the midst of attempting to complete everything before I actually go back for my reservist, I would still offer him a meal for being so agreeable to help me for free though.

So anyway, yesterday was my duty day as well and since I was on site for the first half of the day, I was only able to reach the office at about 11.30 am, about an hour late, and lo and behold, unreliable colleague was still not present. I was late because I had to go to my site, she was late because, well, the only early she knows is leaving. 

I am not a confrontational person, so I have never really confronted her for her tardiness, which has in turn cause me to have a deep seated resentment towards her as evident from this post, which was why when a customer decided to walk in to the Showroom yesterday, I almost snapped at her when she came up to me me and requested for me to serve the customer like it was solely my responsibility to handle the walk-in customers when she was also on duty that day, I was pissed off at her response, so I told her at a volume that was a little louder than usual...

  

"Why don't you serve ? You are also on duty today!"

... I made sure to say it as jokingly as I could, but there is definitely a hint of anger in my voice when I said it, which made me feel really bad afterwards. I guess my response did not come across as harsh to her because when she was finally done with the customer, she sat right across to where I was sitting and started sharing with me what the customer wanted to do, and about a few hours later, tells me she is going to leave early at 8.00 pm because she had a Yoga class to attend, she left at 7.00 pm.

She did tell me she was contemplating whether to quit or not and after leaning of her desire to resign, I have started to view her as a vestigal employee, like an appendix, like it's there, but what is the point of it being there.





(Update)

Just came back from a company meeting not too long ago and good news is she has been transferred to another group, so good luck to that group who got her.

---

Was playing a little Overwatch earlier and nowadays when I get called out by toxic players for being bad at the game, I will never respond back simply because I just don't have a good comeback to the constant...

"Noob!"

... and a lot of times, I only get upset for a minute and then I am fine afterwards, but I have to say, it is really gratifying to sometimes respond back and just anger them.



For example, I was playing a game earlier, and the team only had an Ana, I doubt she would be able to heal the team on her own, so being relatively okay with playing Mercy, I decided to pick her and I started healing away, things were going pretty well at the start until things actually went to shit when everyone started to die one by one.




The problem with players dying one by one is that they start rushing into the enemy point alone the moment they respawn, which means by the time I am within proximity to heal them, they are already dead, and as a healer, this can get really really frustrating because it's not that I am not playing my part well, it's just that I can't really do much if the other players want to rush into the enemy's point without waiting for their healers.



Needless to say, we lost the game and of course someone in my team who was playing a Pharah had to do the inevitable and started blaming the healers...

"Noob Mercy"

"Noob Ana"

.... this Pharah player was pretty much useless during the game because every time I was on a look out for her in the sky so I can fly towards her, she wouldn't be there, and its only after I have died and respawn would I see her from across the map, getting killed by the enemy team and falling from the sky. 

I wasn't really angry at the Pharah player for blaming the healers, I have been blamed many times by badly coordinated group for being a horrible player and I have also been praised by well co-ordinated groups for being a great player, so a lot of times, when other players start playing the blame game, I won't respond, but for some reason, I decided to respond back to this player, and rather than stringing out a whole paragraph of how he was pretty much useless throughout the whole game as a Pharah player and then explaining my reasons for not being able to heal him, I just wrote a sweet and simple...

"Noob Pharah"

... and that was enough to warrant a "Fuck You" reply from him, sadly, before I could respond back to him in kind, he had already left the group, but not before being pointed out for being a bad player by someone else in my group.

So now, I have learn that there is no point in trying to explain yourself to a toxic player about why they are the problem,  it's so much easier to just give them a taste of their own medicine in the chat with the same chidlish insult, that will be more than enough.