*Dedicated to mikey, P1000 & white boy D from Yonkers

Right next to my department, there was another department that was nothing but female employees except the manager. Due to its working environment, I had no choice but to be around this department. In this department, there was an employee, Nut Job aka 미친년, who genuinely disliked people in general such as her customers. I’m pretty confident that this Nut Job drove customers away because of her personality and everything else. In the beginning, I didn’t have any issue with her, but as the time went on, Nut Job was slowly getting on my nerves for her laziness.

In our first conversation, she asked me if I was a Korean. Then, she went on to tell me that she was obsessed with a K Pop idol, and she also married a Korean guy who was 30 or 40 years older than her. When she told me that her husband was 30 or 40 years older, I immediately thought and said to myself while whatever Nut Job was talking in the background,

“Shabba Ranks, What dis gyal tinkin’? Come now! igle jube, jube – igle jube. She nuh waan no igle jube, jube… igle jube. Sim-simma, who got the keys to my Bimma?”

Then I briefly went back to good old time of abyss in my mind and remembered those days in clubs with people dancing and grinding each other. And when I snapped back to reality, she was talking about her in-law family situation with her 8 or 9 kids. When she was not forced to help customers with her disgruntled facial expression, there were 3 main things she did while at work. One was looking at her phone for Facebook. Another was talking to Wesley for who knows how long. Lastly, talking to coworkers in her department and the disabled girl in my department. When the disabled girl was not playing her position under the triangle offense with the space cadet and another girl in my department, she would form the unstoppable duo with Nut Job like the Great One and Messier or Lemieux and Jagr of talking to each other and not doing much to help out others.

It became a habit for Nut Job to just call my name when customers asked her questions about things she should already know or she could find out easily just by looking at the computer right in front of her. It was very apparent that anybody can just call my name anytime for anything thanks to guys like Wesley and other managers.

Almost every drama or scandal happened in that building, she somehow found out about them before others. I found out a whole lot of things happened in that place just by being around and overhearing Nut Job talking to other employees. One thing was for sure, Nut Job was detrimental to my department because she talked too much with employees in my department on top of interfering with my work time to time. Also, Nut Job and others telling the disabled girl that she didn’t have to do much because the company can’t fire her was not going to help my department at all. Just by working in this department alongside Nut Job for awhile, I finally understood how Johnny Depp felt in ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?’ I was upset when I couldn’t find a limited collector’s edition of the movie with behind the scene interviews. I wanted to understand how Johnny Depp and Leonardo Caprio prepared for their roles. I thought maybe that could’ve been a valuable insight that I needed.