I started a job at a hardware store as a cashier, and I was trained by a girl we'll call Snorlax. She was determined to "take me under her wing," and be BEST friends. I didn't argue with her, she scared the crap out of me so I just stayed quiet and let her talk at me.
Snorlax was something special. Basically, a struggling single mom with the snotty attitude of an entitled Karen, and that was if you were on her GOOD side. On bad days, she would damn near come to blows with customers and coworkers. Screaming at the top of her lungs was not uncommon.
[Note: a lot of commentary about her character is coming from months of her telling me her life story and treating me like a real life diary; I’m not making assumptions, it’s literally her telling me this is what she wants and how she is. LOTS of toxic people do the favor of telling you how toxic they are right off the bat.]
Around men she was different, she was a very flirty girl, she told me she was looking for a dad for her [unruly] young son. At the time, I really didn't care, I was fresh off of a civil but upsetting divorce, so her casting a big net really did not affect me. I do not usually "shit where I eat" as the saying goes. At this time, I was specifically warned by Snorlax to NEVER flirt with a guy we’ll call Cubone-in-the-lumber-yard. She would overtly flirt with him in front of customers and coworkers which got awkward a lot. Literally crossing her arms under her boobs and bending forward to talk to him, touching him constantly, turning *everything* he said into a dirty joke, double entendres left and right. It was jaw dropping, she might as well have flashed a neon sign in his face that just said, "F*CK ME."
And God forbid I was friendly with him when he'd check out in my line, she'd come at me like a storm to interrogate me on everything that Cubone and I chatted about.
It was nuts. Like, what am I supposed to do when ringing him up? Eyes down, single syllable answers?
Anyway, cut to almost 6 months later, the store mananager opened up the lead position of our department and invited me to apply. I didn't tell anyone, 'cause... I dunno, that seemed odd to share.
Anyway, I got promoted to be lead of the department, above Snorlax and she lost it. I was now officially on her bad side. She'd tell anyone who would listen that I slept with the store manager to get my job, that I lied on my application for the position, that I *sabotaged her application* somehow. Now I was in her crosshairs and **it was miserable**.
Lucky for me, I didn't have to try to navigate that very long!
I thought -_-
Snorlax was finally fired for going full Karen mode on too many customers and too many coworkers. To be clear, I had nothing to do with this. Management had been working on it well before I was hired, let alone promoted.
A petty part of me though, looked up from the cash registers to see two managers walking her out with a bag of stuff from her locker and **I wanted to throw confetti.**
Coincidentally, lumber yard Cubone was checking out at a register next to mine at the same time she was being walked out. She made a beeline for the guy and tried to pressure him into giving her his phone number. I tried to ignore the conversation as much as possible, just staying busy at another register, hoping she doesn't realize I'm standing right next to her.
He avoided the question and pretended not to own a cell phone. While I was mid-cringe, her escort reminded her she had to leave NOW. I hear a clatter and the candy display next to me was wrecked and she literally screamed at me out of nowhere, like an unhinged banshee, "FUCK YOU!" I jerked away from her in surprise and she stormed out. I looked at lumber-yard-Cubone who's just as shocked as me and said, "Dang dude, I wasn't the one who refused to give her my number, what the heck?" He just shook his head and started helping to clean up the mess.
After that, she liked to spend her weekends trespassing on the property to talk crap about me left and right. I walked past her DOZENS of times only to hear her do the typical mean girl's crap of obviously hushing herself and the worker she was talking to, staring at me and giggling.
By the end of the next month, she had multiple departments repeating ridiculous rumors about me.
No matter how many times I reminded management that she's supposed to be banned from the property for a year, they didn't bother enforcing the rule.
I kept my head down and my mouth shut, determined to stay on the higher road and many of my coworkers familiar with the drama did defend me so that was reassuring. Then I get called into a meeting with management that is literally about all these rumors of sleeping around, stealing, cutting corners, anything bad that good old Snorlax could think of. I wanted to scream because the whole meeting just felt SO inappropriate. Disproving a negative feels impossible. How do I PROVE I'm not sleeping with 60% of the staff? And even if I wanted to prove that, why the hell is management asking me to explain myself? Coworkers dating isn't against the rules, especially because the family who owns the company notoriously married **employees** of the company!
For weeks while this went on, I had kept repeating in my head that stupid adage, "Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it." I left that meeting feeling so angry, so frustrated, and just helpless.
I didn't know what to do, and the little angel on my shoulder hadn't been ONE BIT of help, so screw it, let's consult the devil on the other shoulder. The consensus was thus:
Fuck it. Let's get dirty.
First order of business: I asked Cubone to accompany me and a group of gossipy coworkers to the bar. He turned out to be a really friendly dude who was absolutely terrified of Snorlax. I was surprised by that considering she practically salivated at the sight of him at work. He shrugged that off and said he liked the attention, but she was such a psycho, he didn't want to reject her and make her mad but he also DEFINITELY did not want to date her. I learned a lot about lumber yard Cubone that evening, he was actually a pretty sweet guy. Which was good, it made my plan more fun to execute..
By the end of the night, he and I were toasty drunk and best friends and now our fellow coworkers at the local watering hole with us finally had something new to gossip about with Snorlax.
It took less than a week later for Snorlax to be in my Facebook DM's going absolutely FERAL. Telling me to stay away from her man, she “saw him first”, threatening to "ruin" my face so he won't even look at me anymore, just CRAZY stuff. I don't reply to any of it yet, watching her get more and more worked up at each read receipt.
And after a particularly vicious barrage of hate messages from Snorlax, I dropped my well earned ammunition back at her.
A selfie of her beloved Cubone being kissed on the cheek by yours truly.
Good lord, I thought she had been feral before. If just talking to him at work sent her into fits, being seen at a bar in a group outing sent her into the stratosphere, THIS photo coyly snapped and saved photo sent her into fucking *ORBIT*.
I just watched streams of text flying up the screen, declined call after call, and responded to none of it.
I had my fun screenshotting and saving voicemails of her scream-crying that I ruined her life and lots of creative threats towards me. I saved it all, shared it with my roommate and sister, my closest darlings, and she lost steam and finally moved on. I didn’t see her at work more than once or twice after that [thank goodness] and Cubone and I remained good friends. And quite a while after (maybe a year or so) Cubone and I *did* hook up a couple times, but it wasn’t related to being petty at Snorlax.
TLDR: Don’t push Drella to listen to the demons, I *will* steal "your man".
