The She Bitch From Hell

It's time to introduce one of my co-workers, whom I affectionately call (unbeknownst to her) the She-Bitch-From-Hell.

The she-bitch-from-hell is a farm owner. She works for our business 30 hours a week, while her husband tends the farm. One of our projects here involves renting part of her land for a big woodland/outdoors project that will, upon completion, take up some 25 odd acres of her farmland. So, it's quite handy that she works with us - makes dealings and negotiations easier.

Now, the she-bitch is a very strange character. She loves gossip. I think she thrives on it - sod food and water and fresh air and all of that, she'll take gossip, thank you very much. She also has a strange affinity for the phone. It's like they're having an affair. The phone will ring and she'll pounce on it, even if she has to bound across the office in a mad rush to get there before anyone else. She'll hold the handset close, lovingly caressing its moulded plastic as she whispers sweet nothings down the line.

Woe betide anyone should stand near her when she's on the phone. She'll lean down close to her desk, turning away from you and hugging her beloved phone in a territorial embrace, her voice slipping down a few decibels more so that it's a wonder the person on the other line can hear her at all.

As well as this covert liaison with the phone, she also seems to be predisposed to open everyone else's mail. The manager foolishly told her she can open mail 'addressed to the business' incase he's busy and it's something important. Her little malicious mind interpreted this as 'open anything that we get, even if it's marked 'CONFIDENTIAL, ADDRESSEE ONLY' '. And she does. She opens letters addressed to staff concerning matters of tax and national insurance. Private, personal letters - stuff she has no right to see. She frequently opens mail that comes through for me, even if I'm in the office and no more than five yards away from her, and regardless if my name is printed in underlined bold 50pt text on the envelope. She'll open it, read it, and then smugly declare that 'I think this one's for you...'

We've been trying for a grant with Environment Wales. We sent off our application, but they needed more information and so deferred our application to the next meeting and sent us a letter detailing which extra information we needed. Rather, more to the point, they sent ME the letter since I'm the one who put the application together, I've been dealing with them over the phone, and it's my contact name on the application. The next meeting was yesterday, the 13th, and the deadline for us sending in this extra information to them was the 12th.

Why, then, did I only see the letter today, when the manager handed it to me and said 'can you give them a ring and see if it's too late for us to send them the stuff?'. I looked at the letter, and noticed my name quite clearly on the top. Apparenly it came sometime last week. I was in the office all last week. If I'd seen this letter, maybe I could have reminded the manager to get the stuff in by the deadline and we would have got the grant. Now, it's unlikely we will, thanks to she-bitch and her wiley ways.