An awesome work story.

I heard the most excellent story at work yesterday.

Okay, so basically, I have one lady who is in charge of my department (who has an office), and then there are two full-timers who kind of supervise the main parts of our work, and they each have their own desks right next to each other, and the rest of us move around. One of the full-timers is training me (I'll call her H).

SO! I was sitting at the one girl's desk with her, and she was showing me how to do something when one of our department's phone lines rang. "It's her again," H said. The phone rang again, and H looked at the other full time lady (that I'll call Tasha), she was like "Tasha, don't answer it, it's her again." H stood up and loudly announced to everyone in our department, "NOBODY ANSWER THAT. IT'S HER AGAIN."

Not knowing anything about it, I was of course curious. "Who?" I asked H. "It's a crazy lady," she said. "She's called three times already today." H pointed at a little paper pinned up to her bulletin board that said:

do not answer calls from

LADY'S NAME

lady's phone number

"Does she call every day?" I asked. "No. Just sometimes." I guess sometimes she'll go months without calling, and other times she calls a bunch. One time Tasha threatened to call the police if the lady called again, and she didn't call for months after that. Until yesterday.

And H told me a little bit about it, and then she had to go do something and while I was waiting for her, Tasha told me more about it.

I guess they had answered her calls before, and the reason she was calling was to tell us that Tasha is crazy and we should do something about it. (She's not; she's not new here, and she's great.) And when she asks for Tasha and someone tells her that Tasha doesn't want to take her call (Tasha has told her not to call that number many times before), the lady gets all mad. The lady called H crazy and a drunk. And she said similar things to one of my other coworkers when they answered.

SO what happened was, before Tasha started working with us, she worked at another library. And this lady was a patron there. And that was how they knew each other. Tasha says she doesn't know, she thinks she may have given the lady her home number back a long time ago, but definitely not her work one--the lady figured it out on her own.

Tasha said that the lady is an artist. And her stuff was on exhibition at Trolley Square. So Tasha went, to be nice and show support, because the lady had invited her. And while she was there, she saw some other artist's prints that she was already familiar with, and she really liked the guy's stuff, and you could get a little framed one for like $5, so she bought one as a little gift for some relative who was coming to visit soon. AND THEN! This lady was all offended that Tasha didn't buy one of her paintings. But hers are like those massive canvases, and they're all very expensive. And Tasha can't afford a huge huge canvas painting for hundreds of dollars or whatever.

And so this lady got mad and started sending her all these letters. And one time she sent a stack of like, printouts? with pictures of her work, or something like that. And Tasha was like "..." [what am I supposed to do with these?]. And Tasha asked her when the crazy lady called her again, and after half an hour of prying it out of her, the lady was like, "Well, you're still in touch with your in-laws, right?" and Tasha's like [surprised] "No..." Because her husband died years ago. And I think the lady knew that. But she wanted Tasha to like, get in touch with her relatives, so that she could give them advertisements for the lady's paintings. ... Ummmm no.

And another time, the lady was dating some guy and wanted Tasha to meet him. So she was like "You should have us over to dinner sometime!" EXCEPT! She had told Tasha before that the guy was a criminal! And Tasha didn't want him, like, in her house, knowing where she lived. And Tasha was like "You can come for dinner if you want, but I don't want you to bring him"...

And now I'll finish with the best part of the story.

About the criminal knowing where she lived, or whatever, Tasha told me it's a locked apartment building, where you need to have a key to get in at all. She said though, even though she can't get in, sometimes this lady will come to her house. She said one time the lady came, and it was like midnight, and the lady stood outside and was like "TASHA!!! TASHA!!!!" from down at the street. And she opened her window and was like "What?" And I don't remember why, but she invited the lady in. And the lady came in, etc, but she stopped and knocked on the door of one of Tasha's neighbors. And Tasha said she knew a single guy lived there. And Tasha was like "What are you doing?!"

So she knocked, and remember it's midnight. And the guy comes to the door and from inside says, "Who is it?" And the lady says, "Me," in a singsongy voice. And the guy is like "What do you want?" to which she responds, "Just one passionate kiss." [!!!] And Tasha is embarrassed, obviously, and she doesn't want the neighbor to associate this lady with her, so she goes inside her apartment and leaves the lady. The lady said she was just doing it as a joke. But how crazy is that?!

True story.