Ghosts of Employers Past

I'd recognize her anywhere. She was widely referred to as Big Bird. I think she looked like the Bumble in the Christmas show, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Same body type. Same googly eyes (with very flattering Hubble Telescope glasses, I might add.) Hair that looked like she combed it with a fan. Fashion sense of nun. Most catastrophically boring wardrobe I've ever seen. But then again, I know nothing of the challenges faced by women who have to stretch a pair of pants around what is barely recognizable as a human ass. It would be like trying to put a rubberband around a mobile home.

But for her obvious weekend getaway (with her only friend, I'm sure, who sadly dresses like she shops in a dumpster) she has churned out a little hype. Her freeze-dried blonde hair has lost its usual tumbleweed quality and is missing the dent that is usually left by the scuunci she obviously wraps around her wet hair before she flops into bed at night, bed springs wincing under the stress. She is still wearing the same tired black knit pants that she routinely wore to the office, probably for the "slimming" effects of wearing black. Asking the black pants to have a slimming effect on her medicine ball-sized ass cheeks would be like asking highlights to improve Donald Trump's hair. Never. Gonna. Happen. She is wearing a crisp white twin set as opposed to the blousy, fake silk patterned tops she usually paired with an ill-advised boxy cut jacket that did nothing but emphasize all the wrong things. She may as well have worn a pin which read "Caution. Vehicle makes wide turns." But it's a twin set. A white twin set. With pants. At the beach. Did she know she was coming to the beach or did she think she was going to the Business Card Exchange for Professional Singles With Nothing Else On Their Calendars?

And the feet. There is no concealing them. Throw out the shoes. Wear the boxes. My God she can kick up a lot of sand with those slabs of meat.

I quietly (well as quietly as I get, anyway) point out to The Girls the two people and give a thumbnail sketch of their back story in relationship to me. Adrienne is a poorly informed and overly confident executive who has no idea how abrasive and rude she is or how enormously underqualified she is for the job she was so graciously given by her friend, who happens to run the company now. She is one of the most highly disliked pains in the ass on the payroll saving one. Her buddy, Beth, who she probably met in the cafeteria late one night, since all they do is work 80 hour weeks so they can say they did and not feel so terrible about having nothing more interesting or enjoyable to do. Beth is a smile-in-your-face-while-someone-she-knows-puts-sugar-in-your-gas-tank kind of girl. The type that stirs up trouble elsewhere and somehow finds a way to blame it on her latest target. (Shit Starters is the official term. Pot Stirrers are amateurs.) The type who files away every conversation, every decision, every nuance about another person so she can use it all against them later, usually in a uniquely humiliating public situation. A person who would rather destroy another person than peaceably resolve a conflict. Because it makes a much better story. And a person who will never forgive you for looking 10 years younger than she is, or being 80 pounds lighter, when your birthdays are only 2 weeks apart and she is younger. A Cardinal sin. No turning back from the Gates of Hell.

Jill visibly winces when she sees the two of them. "They gave YOU a hard time?"

Yes, hard to believe, isn't it?

I waffle back and forth with the ideas of wanting them to see me and not wanting them to see me.

I hate that I am running into them socially. Even more so since I am still not employed. Being the type that has no life outside of work, that would be the first question they'd ask. I'd have to kill them both.

On the other hand, I have never looked better. If Beth was intimidated by my appearance 6 months ago, she'd be in a flopsweat at the sight of my abs now. Best shape of my life. Relaxed. Tan. The picture of health. I'm in a bikini and she is stuffed into black knit pants like so much sausage in too little casing. It would only be better if Mark, Chris, The Beave and John would show up right about now. But even still, I am obviously at The Fun Table with 4 of my most gorgeous friends. Intimidating enough. If she would just walk by while we were all busting a gut laughting it would be priceless.

I'll let Fate decide what happens. Right now, a round of Rippers is on its way, and there are some appealing men coming to the next table. Time to focus on the reason for the weekend. And that has nothing to do with Ghosts from Employers Past.