Though I generally liked my time working at my old office, I was desperate to quit. I worked the front desk at the international students office, a high-stress, low-paying job. The office was underfunded, always busy, and tempers flew - those of the students whose documents weren’t ready yet, and those of the advisors who tried their damnedest to avoid seeing the students. I imagine the job is comparable to that of a telemarketer, except people scream at you in person (oh, and they definitely screamed over the phone, too). Sometimes I’d step into the back room, shaking because some asshole, distantly related to royalty back in his home country, would berate me for being stupid and incompetent, because of some issue beyond my control. The worst, though, was when something got screwed up on our end, or I messed up by not writing something down or passing info along in time. That didn’t happen as much, but when it did, I felt awful.

Also, I’d apparently snubbed the elderly office manager without thinking, and my front desk co-worker (who happened to be a chain-smoker; they all were) let it slip that she had been thinking about firing me. I was really upset by this, as she’d never mentioned any of her displeasure to me, and I’d been a good worker, as everyone else noticed. Very few student workers were willing to sit at the front desk, and even fewer could handle the stress and traffic. He said she was mad because she’d asked me one day if I knew my school schedule, and I hadn’t enrolled yet, so I told her I’d get back to her. ??? I guess sometimes she forgot we were students and had lives and aspirations besides working in this crummy basement office.

All this, for $6.25 an hour (I started out at $5.45).

So I started looking, and this job came up, and starting pay was a whopping $8/hr. Geometrical Anthropology - oh, I had taken some courses in it, and had even considered changing my major at one point - that sounded like fun, and it couldn’t possibly be near as busy as an office flooded with international students. I sent my application, and the very next day, I got an email about scheduling an interview. How nice.

The first time I walked in, I noticed how nice and spacious the office was. Windows! Natural light! How amazing! The front desk area had a nice sparse minimalist aesthetic to it (I later learned that this was due to Jodie wanting to impress the new director, but I’ll get to that). A couch, with foamy cushions, but present, nevertheless. Jodie shook my hand, and sat down right next to me and explained the various duties I’d have. She had a tendency to over-explain things, I noticed (I think it took her ten minutes to describe what basically amounted to “making copies,” for instance), and also loved to talk, but I chalked that up to secretarial eccentricity.

Then she lowered her voice a little, and explained that she and the boss were having a conflict. “He’s pigheaded, and has it in for me,” she said. “We’ve had SO many problems for the past few months. He’s just one of those arrogant male professors who think they know the program better than me - I’ve served the program for 15 years, and he knows better than ME! - so we HATE each other.” Noticing that I looked a little taken aback, she insisted that I didn’t have to worry - I wouldn’t have to deal with him or talk with him whatsoever, she’d never let a student have to deal with his harsh priggishness, and all communications would be through her.

Throughout, she seemed really excited about my application and qualifications, and my previous experience with office work. They really needed someone qualified and who knew how to handle the various pressures of secretarial work, she explained, and seemed impressed that I already knew how to use a phone and how to operate a copy machine. She wanted to hire me right then and there, she decided, and she’d send me some paperwork to fill out and bring back. “I want you here ASAP! I’m going to LOVE having you here!”

Then she turned to Belle, who had arrived, and started singing Belle’s praises. “Belle is such a DOLL to work with, and she has a lot to put up with,” she said. “But you can ask her about me. Belle, should she work here?”

“…Uh, sure,” was Belle’s reply.

I guess I should have suspected what was to come, just from that brief interview. Yet I really wanted to get out of that old job, and the eight dollars an hour (a lot for a student job) was sorely tempting.

Yesterday turned out to be a deceptively cold and windy day (thank you, useless meteorologists), so I was walking briskly towards the bus stop at the Union, when ahead of me, I saw a bright mop of red hair and a neon flamingo pink windbreaker heading towards me. It took a few seconds for my brain to register who it was (or might be) and I immediately changed course to run inside the building, peeking out of the door after I was safely inside.

Yes, it was none other than Jodie herself, the ex-boss who victimized our office for the fourteen years she worked here, and who has evoked, in those of us who remain, a fear of crazy people that almost borders on craziness itself. I don’t think she saw me, as I practically sprinted into hiding when I saw who she was, and her hair, which looks different and slightly wig-like in quality now, was in her eyes.

It might have been a case of “speak of the devil,” as Dr. Kinney had mentioned hearing that Jodie has been making inquiries and applying to work for other departments on campus. Belle seemed certain that Human Resources has blacklisted her name and will never, ever hire her again (after all, she gave the HR department the most grief out of the many people she’s battled). I’m not so sure. Say, for some reason, she’s the most qualified applicant for a job (there are no other applicants, or they’re all ex-convicts, or missing limbs and unable to type and make copies). I don’t think they’re legally allowed to deny her a job, and if they do, she certainly has no qualms about harrassing them every day until they relent. Dr. Kinney said that if she does end up being hired somewhere, we need to find out where, so we know to stop opening mail we receive from that department (no joke; I don’t think she’d send us anthrax, as Belle says, but she’d probably send us a bunch of bitchy “poison-pen” letters written in Comic Sans).

Looking back on the posts I’ve written about her, after moving all my Blogger posts to my server, I don’t think I ever really captured the fullness of her insanity in print. For obvious reasons, I had to censor myself, not least because I did blog at work, and she had a habit of sneaking up behind my desk and surprising me with another medical ailment or family problem. So I think I’m going to sit down this week and share, with all three of you that read this blog, all the fun stories about Jodie that I’ve written elsewhere. And of course the whole thing’s amusing and fun to write about now, in retrospect, but not so much at the time, when my position became clear - my paycheck was at the mercy of a bona-fide, DSM-IV, sanatorium escapee.

And if you’re curious, or live in Lawrence and want to know who to avoid talking to at all costs, here’s a picture of her the local newspaper published awhile ago:

Ugh. The memory of her sheer unpleasantness has even ruined the name ‘Jodie’ for me, which of course is not her actual name. Apologies to Jodie Foster and others.