STAMPY THE STOMPER

I am one whose nerves are now easily agitated thanks to my decision to work in public service jobs where there a re plenty of people to work them.  There are numerous things that now annoy me and this account is but one.

     There is a stomper in my office.  This young woman, alone, sounds like a heard of elephants ascending and descending the cement staircase in front of my desk.  When she walks past, you can't help but imagine spiders and roaches and all sorts of other creepy crawlies that must be in her path causing her to stomp them to death with every step she takes.  I've nicknamed her "Stampy" in full homage to Bart Simpson's elephant who walked through his neighborhood destroying everything he came in contact with.  I often hear her before I see her and turn to my colleague and say, "Here comes Stampy again."  My co-worker thinks it's hilarious.  What really gets me is that she is as thin as a rail. I mean deathly, starving-looking, thin, but walks as if she weighs three hundred thousand pounds. I Just don't get it. 

     To make matters worse, it's like a dark cloud of despair looms over her head and follows behind her wringing it's hands together like a wrinkled old woman.  She never smiles, looks as if her first born was taken from her moments after delivery, and she repeatedly starts her morning stomping into the office, past my desk, shoulders hung, with a heavy despair filled sigh and these words, "Another morning."  I promise you it takes everything within me not to get up out of my seat, walk around the desk, stop her, shake her like a Raggedy Ann doll, and tell her I hate my job just as much as she does, mostly because of people like her, and that if she walks past my desk like that one more damned time I would open a window and help her end it all.  Instead, I say nothing. I don't look at her, or acknowledge her at all.  It makes me feel badly to treat another human as if they do not exist but hey, survival of the fittest. It's either me or her and I refuse to let her sad, skinny, stampy self depress me further.