Deadwood

Our instrument line is heavily concentrated with human mutants and freaks. The Precision Group gave up one of their assemblers to help on the Ghost Box transfer and she's now part of our line. She's kinda freaky. She's a large woman with short blonde hair and she has dark circles under her eyes all the time. Maybe she doesn't get any sleep at night or perhaps someone has been punching the shit out of her daily. Looking at her I often think of MAD magazine because she reminds me of a character that came to life from their cartoon pages. She would be the overweight buck-toothed woman with rolling pins in her hair and she would be wearing a polka dot dress. Under her arm she would carry a handbag stuffed full of bricks just for the purpose of hitting some poor unsuspecting guy over the head with it. He may or may not deserve the beating.

Let's just say this woman is difficult to look at.

Musclehead is the technician assigned to the Ghost Box project so he has been working closely with this particular lady, and he doesn't like her one bit. He accuses her of doing poor assembly work each and every time one of her boxes fails in the test process and Musclehead has to fix it. He always yells at her that it's her fault and he makes a big dramatic production about what a pain in the ass it is to fix her broken instruments. Sometimes I have to admit his antics are comical. He nicknamed her Deadwood because in his eyes she's a worthless employee. It's especially harsh for her because he calls her Deadwood to her face instead of using her first name. I'm not working with either of them on those Ghost boxes but I have a feeling it isn't all Deadwood's fault. Musclehead is a green technician as he just got out of tech school last year and he doesn't have much prior work experience. I figure it's a combination of both of them screwing up the boxes.

I know Deadwood has a tough time in here at work as it is without someone like Musclehead constantly fucking with her. I feel bad for her. The other day she came over to the phone near where I was sitting and made a call. She was leaving a happy message for someone, or so I thought by eavesdropping on her. About the same time every day she comes over and makes a similar sickeningly cheerful call. Out of curiocity I asked her who she was calling to leave such a disgustingly happy message for. Deadwood told me she likes to call home and speak to her weenie dog through the answering machine every afternoon. Her only friend in the whole wide world is a little dog. That seemed kind of fucked up and depressing to me. I asked her if she had family of her own or a husband or anything and she said she never has. She's got to be in her late 40s by now so I would imagine it's too late for her. What a horrible way to live.