My schedule isn’t necessarily busy enough to warrant it, but it’s nice to not have to think about where to fit in the various necessities of life. I used to keep my own schedule but I would plan then re-plan my day so often that the eraser would eventually go right through the page. My schedule was filled with holes, literally holes.
So now I have a guy who does all that erasing for me. I make him pay for supplies out of his own pocket so I can be blissfully unaware of how much my schedule changes. When he had his own desk, the little plaque on it read “Grand Keeper of the Holy Schedule Book.” I like puns. Unfortunately, GKotHSB is pretty unpronounceable as an acronym, so I call him Sally. I don’t think he likes it much because at least once a day, he pounds his fists on the desks and declares quite emphatically that his name is George.
Anything short of a full-blown psychotic break isn’t worth paying attention to and I don’t negotiate with terrorists, so his name remains Sally. Once, a number of years ago, he dropped to the floor and actually kicked and screamed. I removed his shoes since that works on three-year-olds, but it most definitely didn’t work on him. Eventually, he tired himself out and stopped, but he ruined my “date” and therefore had to pay.
So, the next morning he came into work to find his desk missing and its contents neatly laid out in the empty space. Now, I’m not petty so I did leave him his fancy swivel chair. He has back problems and even has a doctor’s note filed with HR that says so. It’s from a chiropractor, so I somehow doubt the validity, but since his only accomodation is a swivel chair he brought from home, I don’t really care.
I also made him jump through some hoops to get that put in his personnel file. The first note was written by a real doctor and not someone who learned how to manipulate your spinal column at a weekend seminar. It also said that he had to use it for his “back problem.” I don’t know about you, I don’t see how I can intentionally violate HIPPA regulations when everyone walks around telling anyone who will listen about their non-descript back problems. Or worse, “sciatica” which is more often than not self-diagnosed. Like celiac’s disease. Way to co-opt real problems, attention-whores.
Ahem. So it didn’t say how he has to use the chair for his back problem. Does he lean over it to realign his spine? Turns out, no. I made him try and he seemed to be in a lot more pain after. So I had him use it as an eating utensil, a prophylactic device and to navigate the stairwell. It turns out, almost all of those things made his back pain worse. The last one saw a temporary improvement as he was face-down on the landing.
The next day, Sally rolled into work in a wheelchair – yet another disability I’d have to accommodate – and two notes. One for the wheelchair and one for the swivel chair. So, you can imagine my surprise when I found him sitting at Arby’s in another chair. At this point, I became convinced that his disability was unadulterated bullshit.
So I superglued him to his chair. And not just a mild coating which forced him to take his pants off, but a full-on slathering that instantly soaked right through his pants, underwear and adhered straight to his skin. It took two teams of medical professionals to separate him from that chair. I felt a little bad about that, so I re-upholstered the chair in a sweet salmon pink. Then upholstered his ass in Naugahyde.
There are no longer any hissy-fits or temper tantrums. Long live Sally!