"Now they've darkened all the windows and the seats are naugahyde."

I hate getting volunteered for crap.

I was sitting in the Cube O' Doom, happily typing away, when Cap'n Asshat (hopefully, I devote no more energy to explaining his shenanigans in the future) walked through the door. He asked my co-worker if she was planning on attending some bullshit committee meeting already in progress.

This co-worker replied that she was no longer a part of that committee, and she would no longer be attending those bullshit meetings, as she no longer did the bi-monthly newsletter articles for our department.

So far, everything was fine.

Then, THEN, she pointed at me, said that I am the one who writes the department's articles now, and I'm the one that needed to attend those meetings.

What? Excuse me, what?

I explained to her that yes, I was volunteered by our manager to do these articles, but at no point in time was I told I needed to attend these bullshit meetings. Writing articles and attending meetings for a committee whose sole purpose was to think of ways to decorate the office's bulletin boards seemed mutually exclusive to me.

This co-worker then went on to say that my attendance was implied because I was writing the articles. Also, she had been forwarding me all the e-mails she received notifying her of meeting dates and times, in a sort of nonchalant manner (I, having no idea why she was sending them to me, as I had no thoughts of even attending the meetings, never bothered to ask her about them, and simply deleted them on sight).

I told her that what she said didn't make sense, and writing articles for the newsletter implies nothing, and if my manager didn't tell me I had to go, I didn't have to go. She then looked at her watch (we have our own staff meeting in half an hour), and she said, "Oh, you can go ahead and go."

Translation: "I don't care if I don't make any sense, I'm pawning off these bullshit meetings on you with a bullshit excuse, and our manager won't be back until next week, so I, le douchebag, who has only slightly more say than you do because of seniority, am going to pretend you just didn't make the most logical argument whatsoever and say that you should go to this meeting."

Bitch, please!

As Cap'n Asshat stood there, I got up to go to this meeting. Why I did this and didn't just tell her to fuck off and sit back in my chair in protest, I'll never know. But I went to this damned meeting. And it was a complete waste of my time.

When I walked back into my office thirty minutes later, I had to gather my stuff up for our departmental meeting. And this co-worker has the nerve to say as she's gathering up her stuff, "I bet that was fun, wasn't it?"

I wasn't even looking in her direction, so I pretended I didn't hear her as I collected my materials. The need to choke the shit out of her was strong, so I did my best to not engage.

Then she came up to me as we were walking out the door and said, "Oh, cheer up."

I suddenly wanted something very bad to happen to her.

For the rest of the day, shit has been hectic. Phones ringing off the hook, stupid things happening. I am only posting this now, via phone, on my lunch break (yeah, did I mention that my lunch starts at 1:45, and because of this same stupid asshole, I had to start lunch fifteen minutes late"?) and I am too busy to even think about saying anything to this person, who is not a friend anyway, so saying something to her would be yet another waste of my time, and would probably make me more agitated.

But that doesn't mean that 1) I didn't rattle off a short missive to my manager, stating that we would talk about it when she got back in town, and 2) that I won't enjoy it if this co-worker receives a bouquet of balloons filled with gas from my Dad after he's had a lot of chili and Diet Coke (which is what I like to call the flatulence from his "Toots McGee" Collection).

Wow, I feel much better now. Let's end this rant and get on with it, shall we?