Papa and the Floozy

Papa Smurf, who I mentioned in the previous entry, was a strange little fellow. This in itself isn't particularly unusual for someone at my ex place of employment - hell they'd prefer if you had something signifying your many anti-social quirks on your resume when you applied for a job there, just to speed things up - but his sort of strange was a particularly virulent strain.

He was also short and squirrelly with a white beard that gave him a falsely serene appearance, like a kindly uncle, or a particularly short and less portly Santa Claus. He was, at that point, in the process of flushing his second marriage down the toilet and had five kids ranging in age from early teens to mid thirties but he couldn't seem to relate to any of them. That was ok though - he couldn't relate to his colleagues either, so at least he was an equal opportunities incompetent.

He was bizarre in lots of different ways. He had no social skills but he spoke fluent Mandarin, something he'd picked up from his Army days. He couldn't make a simple cup of coffee but he would sink into indignant furies over grammar mistakes in newspaper articles or people who couldn't spell. He could be kind and generous and then five minutes later turn into the biggest asshole on the planet. He would never use a one syllable word when there was one with several syllables which would do equally well, a skill which resulted in him firing off elaborate, long, poetic emails to the entire office where people would scratch their heads in wonder and reach for their thesaurus before figuring out what the hell it was he was saying and the fact it could have been said in about three lines.

For all this, his handwriting looked like someone had taped a pen to a skittish chicken. For someone who was high on the correctness of the English language, his penmanship looked like that of a particularly active hospital chart when someone is having a heart attack.

Papa also had a thing for the ladies. After one particularly flamboyant office Christmas party, where he forcefully dragged our receptionist around the dance floor against her will, finally carouselling her into a group of tables and then slow dancing with another ball-breaking, dragonesque, very drunk female executive who kept licking his ear, rumors were flying around the water cooler about his love of the ladies and the liquor.

Also, as everyone knew, he did in fact have a fancy woman. She was in her late 30s, blonde, skinny as a pole and had the sort of high-pitched, irritating giggle that made you want to karate chop her to the floor then pummel her to a bloody pulp. She worked as an EVP within our company and she had Papa wrapped around her manipulative little finger. She would show up numerous times a day, twisting her perfectly blonde hair around her fingers while laughing that laugh and giggling coyly and they'd lock themselves in his office and flirt. At least, she'd flirt and he'd turn a dark shade of scarlet and do really uncharacteristic things like grinning for no apparent reason.

Everyone on the damn block knew about Papa and his manipulative blonde. No one said anything about them out loud but people's glances and knowing nods said it all. She was young, fairly attractive and eager to climb the corporate ladder and she didn't want to wait till she was gray and wrinkly to be powerful and influential. She had Papa hook, line and sinker. She also made sure to send timely gifts to Cruella when an occasion presented itself. PR was really the perfect job for her, since promoting her image was her specialty.

One thing she couldn't seem to do, however, was any real client work. She had a team of lower titled account executives for that sort of thing so she would delegate one of them to scope out a project then she'd go to her yoga class for a couple of hours. People never asked if she was in the office, they asked if she might be expected to come in.

When she became pregnant with her second child, jokes were flying around the place that the baby would pop out of the womb with a beard and an attitude, probably clutching a Cuban cigar and a bottle of anti-depressants.

Which would've been unfortunate seeing as how she gave birth to a girl.

The Manipulator finally left the company around the same time I did. She started her own firm and took a few clients with her when she went, leaving a bitter taste in Papa's mouth and a scowl on his face whenever her name came up.

I guess that was the end of that liaison.