Gertrude

One of the things that I've neglected, (besides my office responsibilities) while writing this blog, is a better description of my colleagues. Most of you may have a sense of the Igloo and Bossman/Alpha Dog, perhaps Rocket -- but the rest of the Kennel is probably just a scattered bunch of pseudonyms and anecdotes. My bad -- I hope to correct that.

Let's start with Gertrude: (names have been changed to protect my ass)

Gertrude has been at the Kennel almost as long as I have. She's my direct boss and the person that I'm supposed to go to when I have an issue, need a day off, can't figure out something etc...

Well she doesn't really do much of that anymore. She usually arrives about two hours late and takes a long lunch break. The woman is remarkably deflated, she spends most of her day in her little cubby of an office and reads. Honestly, I'm shocked when I see her in the office before noon -- it happens around once a week. She lives alone in one of the outer boroughs and has seen her glory days pass her by, I wouldn't be surprised if she was clinically depressed -- there is no doubt in my mind that she is remarkably lonely. Her two closest friends are the Elizabeth Cady Stanton biography and the Oxygen network. She complains constantly about the bossman (which is an easy thing to do) and says -- I just don't care anymore.

She's a southern, middle aged, single lesbian. Let's pause. She's one of these spectacular feminists (and I mean spectacular in both a good and bad way) who really has devoted her life to the advancement of woman's rights. She's been arrested, organized demonstrations, sponsored conferences, filed lawsuits, on behalf of advancing woman's rights. All of which is very noble, the problem is, she can be very standoffish and is impossible to work with.

Gertrude gets something stuck in her head and nothing else matters. If she was working on a tiny little issue, let's say getting the entire office to sign a greeting card, and I approached her saying I had figured out who assassinated Kennedy, she'd yell at me for not focusing on the greeting card.

Gertrude and the Collar hate each other. The animosity between the two of them is sharper than the knife a butcher uses to slice pastrami. (Where did that come from). In the six months they have both been at the Kennel they have said not a word to one another. They will not attend a meeting the other is at, they compete for the support/approval of other office members and they make everybody remarkably uncomfortable. Two aging gays -- destined to be lonely. It is very sad.

I once told Voodoo that they needed to hate fuck each other, she laughed for an hour.

I do like Gertrude, I think she'll be leaving the Kennel in January. Less fodder for the blogger.