Ode to Charlene

My co-worker Charlene is a piece of work. I don't need a tv - I just need her. She talks very loudly; everyone in the office hears her. And she spends most of every day on personal calls.

Today, for instance, Charlene talked to her mom who was apparently rude. I know this because she then called her husband to discuss at length how rude her mom was. Then she talked to her daycare provider. Then she told a client about her recent illness in some detail. Now she is talking to her sister about (what else?) how her mom was rude and how apparently her sister's boyfriend was out drinking with buddies into the wee hours of the morning when their new baby was a week old.

Charlene has a 10-month old baby. Her sister (see above) was watching him 2 days a week, and a neighbor watched him the other 3 days. When her sister had her baby last month she couldn't watch the baby those 2 days a week anymore. So Charlene had a daycare dilemma on her hands. She tossed around the idea of going to part-time, and even got it approved by the partners of the firm. But her husband felt the drop in income was unacceptable. He put his foot down. Besides, she got her baby into "the" daycare in our town, so she seemed okay with it.

A few weeks later, Charlene showed up to work with a new car. A beautiful, beautiful Mercedes. Midnight blue, gray leather interior. Oh, it's so pretty. But it's a freaking Mercedes. Charlene is a paralegal, same as me, and so I know about how much she makes. Not enough to justify a Mercedes. She now has the nicest car at our firm, even nicer than the senior partner, who makes minimum five times her income.

A couple of weeks after she got her posh car, she came down with bronchitis. Badly. She lost her voice, she was hacking in her office, it was gross. And she took only one day off work. "Why don't you go home, Charlene?" I asked in a psuedo-nice voice, thinking in my Satan voice "So I don't have to listen to you hack"

"Oh, I can't afford it."

That's right. Charlene can't afford to work 3 days a week. She can't afford to take time off so she can loudly hack at home (and NOT INFECT THE PREGNANT GIRL WHO CAN'T TAKE MEDICINE IF SHE GETS SICK), when her voice is so croaky she can't talk to clients anyway. But she can afford a Mercedes.

Charlene is full of crap.