Jane Sykes, Chapter One: In Which We Learn The Name That Must Never Be Spoken

Jane Sykes is in her seventies. I was working on the drive up and she pulled up in her huge car. Just before I went to help her, one of the other tellers grabbed my arm and said “Oh, God, it’s Jane. Don’t say her name to her, she’ll flip out.”

I laughed to myself, thinking they were playing a prank on me. I turned and looked at the client and froze in my tracks. I’ve seen how old ladies apply make up. It looks like they applied it driving 80 miles an hour backwards.

Well, Jane looked like she had taped lipstick to the end of a giant swinging pendulum and then ran past it with her lips pursed like a duck bill. Her eyes were crazy. It was like they were vibrating in their sockets. I broke my momentary paralysis and opened the drawer, turning on the microphone. “Good morning, how are you today?”

What issued forth from the speaker was a string of untranslatable gibberish. I heard something about cats as I pulled in the drawer and began to process the transaction. The woman speaks as if she constantly has a mouthful of lozenges.

After a few moments, I finished her deposit and placed her receipt into the drawer, sending it out to her. Without thinking, I asked “is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Sykes?”

I feel I am a good person. I may not have adhered to the strictest definition of my religion’s tenets, but I treat others with kindness and compassion, I try to be the best most decent person I know how to be. I’d like to think it’s the intent, not the delivery, that grants the departed access into whatever hereafter there may be. In other words, I don’t think I am going to Hell.

If I am, though, I have an idea of the kind of demonic howling I am apt to be greeted with. This woman went insane right there in the drive up lane. How could I have used her name? What was I, stupid? Didn’t I know that they were listening at all times? Didn’t I know that if they had found out that she was banking there, they were apt to break into her house in the night?

I apologized profusely and she drove away very angry.

Holy Sweet and Sainted Jesus. I will never doubt my co-workers again.

Happier Holidays

A few days after the big sit down, I spoke with Alice, the manager at the new branch I am looking to work for. She also told me that Jean had a mouthful to say about me when Alice called to discuss the transfer. What Jean didn't know is that Alice knows me for almost a dozen years, and that Alice further knows that Jean is a vindictive and spiteful bitch.

Now, apparently, after the big sit down, Caroline had a bit of an impromptu meeting with Jean, basically telling her to shut the fuck up and be nice. She apparently had a similar meeting with Latoya. Since that day, both have been sweet as pie with me. It has been refreshing. I kept wondering when the other shoe was gonna drop.

Two weeks ago, evidently. Caroline came to me while I was in the break room as I was getting ready to leave for lunch and asked me how I was. She asked how things have been lately, if Latoya was treating me any better. I said yes, she and Jean had been much more professional. I expressed my gratitude to her for making it happen. Then she said it wasn't too late, that I could stay if I wanted.

I may have peed a little.

Not there, on the spot, mind you. On the spot, I simply smiled and said "thanks anyway, but after all that Jean had to say about me, I don't feel comfortable working here any more." No, it was after I had gotten out to my Jeep and driven around the corner. It was as I burst into gales of uproarious, bellowing, side-splitting laughter that I may have squirted a tiny bit.

They didn't even tell me my transfer went through. I had to call Alice on the 12th and find out what my first day at her branch would be. December 31. They kept me for an extra two weeks, because they needed me so badly. If I sucked as bad as an employee as Jean suggested, you'd think she'd have wanted me gone as soon as possible.

FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM IN THE ASS WITH A BIG RUBBER DICK.

I'm out of there. In a week, I'll be in greener grasses. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Sitcom Cancelled?

That's right, folks... as of December 31, I am no longer employed by the Riverhead Branch of Southern Star Bank. I have landed another job at the Blue Point Branch. So I am finally escaping the shanty town that Riverhead has become for some more elegant surroundings.

The Big Sit Down

So, faced with the prospect of being cleared to work full time again and having to spend those 8 hours a day at the Riverhead branch of Southern Star Bank, I was thinking another car accident might be better.

Begging Rodney's pardon, but I get no respect from anyone there. I hate working with Latoya. She is a moron who has stumbled into a position of power and abuses whatever perceived superiority she can at any given moment. Everything I do is questioned, I am constantly being bombarded with work seconds before I leave the building, and when I called out sick one day recently because of problems with my back (which is a documented condition) I was told by Jean that "it is getting very difficult to keep you on the schedule." I have called out four times in total, twice because of back problems, once from a migraine, and once because my brakes failed on the way to work and I had to try and get them fixed rather than careening into walls as my method of stopping. I was told that that is not a good track record. (Even though we get about 20 sick days a year, my using 4 in a 6 month span is deemed unprofessional. Go figure.) Those two times I called out sick for my back were because they abused my schedule and made me work more than the time I was supposed to work.

My friend's sister, who works in the industry, has told me that it's not like this at other branches, and that my management staff is being incredibly unprofessional in allowing things to get as bad as they have. I called a meeting with my management team. I sat with them in the break room and told them the following: (summarized for brevity)

"My doctor has cleared me to work full time. However, I have no intention of working here full time, and here's why. I hate it here. Latoya treats me like shit constantly you both seem to have completely disregarded my doctor's instructions about how long I could work, and when I have called in sick I've been given immeasurable grief. I'm here to tell you that I'm requesting a transfer, and if you don't give me one, I'll quit and apply for another job from the outside."

Caroline asked me to explain why I was so miserable here, and I gave her a laundry list of offenses that Latoya had perpetrated against me, arbitrary conditions, standards and restrictions that were being placed on my work that no other teller was forced to live up to or abide by, and general issues that had plagued me.

Jean said "well, you shouldn't have waited to let it all build up, you should have come to me and told me so I could do something about it."

I respectfully submitted that the abuse was obvious to anyone who was not intentionally blind to it, as every one of the other tellers and bankers had mentioned on occasion that I was not being treated fairly. I also posited that Jean should have done something long ago about Latoya's poor treatment of people without having to have been told.

With this, Jean proceeded to unveil a list of problems that she had with me as an employee; the speed at which I worked (attributed by me to my being methodical and cautious in my approach while handling other people's money), the fact that I called in sick four times (to which I replied that I had missed fewer days that year than her), and the fact that I was not very cheerful to her (to which I laughed, and asked how anyone being heaped with abuse can be expected to be cheery). I wrapped up by cramming her own words right back into her slobbering gob; "Gee, Jean, you shouldn't have waited to let it all build up, you should have come to me and told me so I could do something about it."

For the record, she didn't care for that.

So, that's the lay of the land. Caroline has said she will attempt to make a transfer happen, to which I replied that I already had a branch in mind that currently had an opening. We shall see how fast it happens.

Hallelujah!

After months and months of grueling physical therapy, thousands of accupuncture needles, countless heating pads and hundreds of miles driven to doctors appointments, I have found relief!

Dr. Priolo's colleague, Dr. Colladner, gave me what's called a facet block. Basically, lidocane and steroids were mixed in a syringe and injected directly into the muscle group that has been giving me such problems. She tells me it might not fix the problem completely, but that there is also a chance it might. All I know is I feel pain free for the first time in 11 months! I can stand! I can run! I can pick things up! I can go back to work full time!

Wait.

I can go back to work full time.

SHIT.

Looks like I have to do something about my current job. I don't know if I can take those idiots for 8 hours a day.