The Office Linda

You may or may not have noticed, but there is a Linda in every office. An ‘Office Linda’ if you will. Office Lindas can be recognized by several telltale signs. First and foremost, they are named Linda. Although some Office Lindas go by aliases to confuse and disorient us (Patty is a well known Linda AKA), the majority wear their Linda-ness openly, defying us to decry them as the Lindas they are. Second, no one can quite remember when Linda started, but she’s been in your office forever. One thing is certain about the Office Linda, she’s senior to you and has no compunction about using this fact to undermine and destroy you. Third, Office Lindas are a bitch. The Linda seems to feed off of the negative emotions in the office, she will cultivate gossip and grousing, gathering them to her distended belly as a black beetle gathers dung.

No one knows where Office Lindas come from. I suspect they are grown in rusty pods somewhere in the Midwest. Possibly they are a Monsanto product. But I di know that Office Lindas are very real. I had the misfortune of serving as a Linda’s Assistant once. As an Office Linda gains power in an organization, she sheds parts of her name. She becomes Lind, then Lin and finally, Da. This Office Linda was a junior vice president at a local department store and she had been given the power over an entire department. Her reign was like the plagues of Egypt and misery oozed from the walls. I left that place, but I still bear her claw marks on my back.

Now I’ve begun work at the Assport Office and as must happen in all offices, I have discovered the Linda. She and I do the same job, but she’s been doing it for decades and still seems in awe of the process. She takes the work very seriously and picks apart the smallest details in other people’s work. Since I truly don’t give a shit about the work, this causes problems.

Yet I hadn’t understood her true nature until today. I was doing my work and I dropped a recycling box next to my desk. She walked behind me and said, in an outside voice, “Stop banging around and making so much noise all the time.” No preamble, no ‘excuse me but…’, no please or thank you or any warning that I had in any way deserved to be yelled at in the middle of the office.

Thus we became enemies. I was simply floored by the disrespect, the rudeness, the presumption. She’s an office Linda alright. Luckily, she isn’t my supervisor, I like my supervisor.

I’m almost 31 and I’m a novelist. I do jobs that are fit for recent college graduates because I choose to as a means of furthering my art. I decided some time ago that I simply won’t be treated as a cog, or a child, or a moron in any workplace. I’ve seen too many workplaces where the management behave like parents to a group of spoiled children. This is the sort of environment where Office Lindas thrive. I will not submit to that treatment any longer. Nor will I stand down in the face of blatant Linda aggression. I draw the line here, this far and no further. Office Lindas be warned, I will fight you to the last breath. And all who shed their blood with me in this fight shall forever be my brother… and middle managers comfortable in their corner offices will question their management skills when they hear of our exploits… Upon the Office Lindas’.