Getting The Message

Walking through the assembler's area I passed by their phone and noticed the red "you have a message waiting" light was on. Nobody was around, they were probably all out for lunch either in the cafeteria or off site somewheres. I picked up the receiver and punched in a passcode, then listened to the department voicemail. A squeaky woman's voice filled with superficial worry rambled on about some drama or other. After just a few seconds of hearing that junk my ear ached. It was one of Super Shopper's idiot daughters. She has three of them, in their 20s-30s and all of them are incredibly dim. I couldn't listen to any more of her airheaded monologue without wanting to shout curse words at the ceiling so I deleted the shit.

An hour later I had forgotten about that voicemail until I saw Super Shopper walk by in front of my workbench. I stopped her and mentioned she had a phone message from her daughter. Rather than ask me for any details she instantly tore off for the phone before I could say anything else. She loves the phone. Most nights Super Shopper wastes the bulk of her eight hour shift jabbering away into the phone instead of building instruments. From where I was sitting I watched Super Shopper pick up the receiver at the same time rapidly tapping away on the keypad to get into voicemail menus. She didn't see that the red message light wasn't on anymore. A few seconds elapsed. She entered the code again. Nothing. I could almost see the tiny, rusted gears with missing teeth slowly turning inside her head. A confused, frustrated look bore down on her brow. Futilely she tried again and again to retrieve a message that wasn't there.

Super Shopper turned to face me with the phone receiver still in her hand. She said, "There's no message."
"Yeah. I erased it."
From the look on her face it was like I had just hit her right between the eyes with a rock hammer. Instantly her whole noggin glowed bright red and she screamed at me "YOU DON'T DELETE OTHER PEOPLE'S MESSAGES!"

I had been waiting for an opportunity like this to come, waiting for the past couple of years. A showdown between myself and this pea-brained obnoxious housewife was finally presented to me. See, I hate Super Shopper. Not just because I think she's a beady-eyed fool, it's because during the years I've had to work with her I've quietly watched her destroy people. She screws up her work constantly when she can be bothered to actually do any real work and then blames her mistakes on other employees. She sabotages newhires mainly. Generally newhires are on a probationary period for 90 days and they can be let go for pretty much any reason during their first three months here. They have no recourse when Super Shopper tells a supervisor the reason why a half dozen instruments got wrecked was because of her trainees not paying attention, or some other bullshit like that. Thanks to her we've lost so many promising new people.

Standing up from my chair I crossed the distance between us and got in her face. I said to Super Shopper, "You just got the message. One of your daughters called."
"I DON'T KNOW WHICH ONE OF THEM CALLED AND WHAT IF IT WAS AN EMERGENCY? YOU DON'T DELETE MESSAGES NOW I HAVE TO CALL THEM ALL TO FIND OUT WHICH ONE IT WAS..."
Yelling in her face I cut her rant off. "Every night you waste hours of company time running your mouth on the phone to those stupid kids of yours instead of doing your fucking job. Who cares which one called? You'll end up talking to all three of them anyway tonight just like you always do. What if it was an emergency? Oh you mean like one of them calls to tell you she's getting another divorce kind of emergency, or one of them calls to tell you about a sale at Target kind of emergency? I bet our management staff would really like to know who has been responsible for running up our department phone bill every month. Dontchya think?"

The queen of swing shift dingbats didn't say anything. I nailed her and she knew it. On the inside I was laughing hard. Her cheeks were so violently red with blood rising that I thought she might blow an artery in her neck. It was sweet. I expected her to shriek at me some more but surprisingly she turned and walked away. I'm sure her first reaction was to run straight to a supervisor with tears streaming out of her eyes claiming I had harassed her or something. The threat of being ratted out for phone abuse kept her in check though, must have been scary stuff. If Super Shopper suddenly lost her phone privileges at work I'm certain she would die. For the remainder of swing shift Super Shopper was quiet.