A crazy end to a story

You may have read about my trials and tribulations of having an office mate... from posts 4 weeks ago LINK. Well, things have finally resolved themselves, and I have my office back to myself.

Now, this person is a temp, employed by the vendor to move data from our old system to the new one. Not a great job, but not too bad. In terms of where she fit "on the team", she didn't: She had one small job to do. But she made a lot of fuss doing it.

Yesterday, we decided to move her to another office, after she made a series of frankly bizarre statements about people "looking at her funny", "criticizing her" and one person "gazing deep into her eyes". After checking in with the people identified, most had no idea who she was, and none remembered any major interactions. So we got a picture that reality was a pretty malleable object for her. But her work wasn't too bad - we were prepared to keep working with her, just give us a little space.

Well, apparently moving her wasn't going to work for her: She complained to the depatment director that it was "just for Jim's benefit - why should HE get what he wants?", and that "Jim has it in for me - he's always criticizing me", and the best "he cracks his knuckles because he knows it disgusts me".

Believe me, while I was none to happy about sharing an office, I was always civil. Where I would tune out would be after hearing a long story about, oh say, making meatballs for her ex, who still lives with her, because he's middle eastern and women take care of their men - it's what they expect, and do I think that Dr X (of Syrian descent) is a Christian? Because those middle eastern Christians are an odd bunch.... and so on. As I said in the earlier post, my monosyllabic grunts grew more noncommittal as time passed. And she never commented about my knuckles, so I really had no idea.

What sparked the whole thing was that I was checking her work and discovered a full month of missing data, and asked her about it. That was it. Suddenly she was asking people (including people who are not even in the department or on the project) about my role and why am I looking at contracts and why am I checking her work...

The problem is, of course, that I am the project manager and AM responsible for everything. So checking up IS my job. And she seemed to forget that. Over and over again. See, she had once had a class in "project management" and she KNEW that project managers don't look at contracts, and they don't look at details - they just manage timelines. So I wasn't doing my job. Right.

Between the insubordination, the theories about my personal motives, the inappropriate discussions, the nonstop blather, and many other things I can barely care to remember, it came time today for her to go.

She was walked out mid-afternoon, and I spent a good long while in my office enjoying the silence.

I have to say, it is DEEPLY disconcerting to be faced with what I believe was true mental illness - she had very deep paranoid tendencies, and every story had her as a victim of some sort... she was eternally "wronged" in life... and I'm sure I'll be a good villain in her next narratives.

So that's over. And I feel a great weight lifted: I think that being in that energy field was affecting me. So it's time to move on.