Enter The Dragon (Lady)

A new temp started at Non-Company yesterday.

They never take someone around the first day and introduce them to 'the gang'; I guess it's because some temps never make it past lunchtime.

So today after said temp returned for the second day and apparently made it through the first day lunch period without sprinting to her car and re-enacting the OJ Car Chase-circa 1994, they decided 'What the heck?' and began the Non-Company tour of the factory floor, the conference rooms where she will soon attend her first bewildering Justice League Meeting, her first safety training where she will view what I like to call the, 'Reel of Horror' which basically comprises clips of former Non-Company unfortunates who were maimed or crippled for failing to observe safety precautions. If she's lucky she will view it before lunch, unlike some of us other unfortunates, who have never been quite the same since then when viewing the chili dogs on offer in Non-Company vending machines. Then they take her around and introduce her to the various departments.

Her guide on this tour is a semi-nemesis of mine, who flatly seems to disapprove of me, for reasons I've never been quite able to ascertain. Once again, I feel myself called upon to explain things in MASH terminology (I watched ALOT of MASH in my youth, if Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele and Michael Weatherly as Tony DiNozzo were film savants, I am a MASH savant), in Non-Company parlance apparently I'm the Margaret Houlihan, the dragon lady, old 'Iron Drawers'. For Semi-Nemesis, instead of introducing me with a smile as we exchange friendly banter like she did with the rest of the Non-Com minions, says, "This is Jill, she keeps these guys in line and runs the department, all of your requests go through her first", although in print it seems to come across a lot warmer than it was said. All of the sudden, I picture myself clad in a prison matron's uniform, wearing combat boots, my hair cropped in a crew cut and for some reason a night stick, which I repeatedly strike across my right palm. Which is so far from the reality of me, who has fluffy bobbed blonde hair and wears lots of jewelry and artfully (I hope) applied cosmetics. I can actually see Newbie Temp shrink from me in much the same way she will a few weeks from now, when she views the 'Reel of Horror'. I try to smile warmly, but for some reason it falls flat. Done with me, they move on to the relative safety of my co-workers. Part of me wants to run after them, wailing, "Really, please give me another chance. I...I love puppies, kittens, sunsets, unicorns, ummm...Justin Bieber...okay, actually I loathe the 'Biebs', but I didn't totally hate that 'Baby, Baby..Oh' song...okay I did, but....please, please...."

I go on to spend a great deal of my lunch hour pondering what it is about me, that creates this alter-ego, this Thatcher-esque 'Iron Lady'. Full disclosure is, I am the only female in my department. It's me and seven other dudes (and no they ARE not dwarves!) I've had to develop a tough skin, a fondness for racy jokes, frat humor, to try to stay elevated just enough above the double-entredes so that I keep my ladylike manner but not be a prig either. I bake them cupcakes for birthdays, keep the candy jar filled, get greeting cards signed on all the appropriate occasions, at the same time, I have to be able to judiciously officiate the occasional infighting, while trying to maintain my reports, my own workload, the extra 'secretarial' duties, arranging lunch for meetings, arranging housing for long-term business trips, scheduling meetings, reminding them about said meetings, and that means I don't have time for the office politics crap. I don't sit on committees, and I don't come in sharing all the gory details of my weekends, because here's the thing, while to women drama is mother's milk, guys don't like it so much. I tend to spend my lunch hours away from the office, away from the lunch room gossip, because I so desperately need those 30-50 mins to myself to maintain my sanity, to read, make phone calls, restore my equilibrium. I guess to them that means I'm stuck-up, but for me it's the difference between cracking up and being a sane and functioning human being.

Don't get me wrong, of all the things I might find wrong about Non-Company, my department is not one of them, the guys I work for are gold. You'd be hard-pressed to find a harder working, more dedicated, talented crew anywhere, but it sets me apart from the rest of the company. It's almost like I can hear the whispers, "That's the girl that works in that department with all the guys, yeah, I've heard about her."...

I wonder if it carries over into the rest of my life. One of my Non-Company dudes once said to me, something to the effect of, I was all hard shell on the outside, with a soft center that rarely gets seen. I ponder what makes me like this. Is it hard-wired into my personality, a hold-over from school days where I was shunned by the other kids for wearing thick glasses and reading all the time? For being a weirdo who actually preferred being quiet and listening to music instead of going out partying and socializing. I was so super-introverted that I really never learned exactly how to socialize, to flirt, how to talk out my feelings.  I've heard it before from plenty of people, including an ex-boyfriend who stated, "I never know exactly what you are thinking, because you only share to a point."

I worry that maybe I am Margaret Houlihan, desperate to be included but unwilling to grovel,
"Did you ever once offer me a lousy cup of coffee?"

And I wonder what Newbie Temp would think if I told her how much I envy her this chance to be just that, a new person, cloaked in mystery, someone everyone wants to meet and find out about, not the dragon lady persona I am not even sure how I came to inhabit. But one whose scales I can't seem to shake.