Colleague stuck in junior high?

In writing this post, I have to confess a guilty pleasure. I might be addicted to watching "Celebrity Apprentice" with Donald Trump. (When I admitted this to a group of colleagues, the reaction was a solid groan, so I'm a bit sensitive.)

The reason "Celebrity Apprentice" makes good fodder for We Can Relate can be explained in two words: Melissa Rivers. She, with the help of mom Joan, has made the show's "workplace" -- and I use that term loosely -- a veritable junior high school cafeteria. (Melissa has even described it that way, though she blamed the other players, of course.)

Melissa always was miserable when she was on the job because she thought everyone was out to get her -- she complained they were talking about her behind her back, excluding her from projects, disregarding her ideas. So everyone else was miserable when she was around.

Haven't you worked with someone like that before -- a colleague who made your job more work than it had to be?

It made me think of N., an amazing reporter and passionate writer who spent most of the time at the office complaining about our boss and, well, everyone she came in contact with. They all interfered with her ability to create the best stories she could -- edited too much, asked too many questions, demanded she make deadline, and on and on.

Truth was, N. was the one creating all the drama. But you couldn't tell her that. And you couldn't spend too much time entertaining her tales of woe, because then you couldn't get your own job done.

So you had to cut her off as diplomatically as possible, or avoid getting tangled in her grip of drama -- again, as diplomatically as possible.

But that would feed her claims of being persecuted, and you'd get caught up in a round of questioning about whether you were mad at her and what she had done to make you treat her so coldly.

N. still works at the same place, but the cast of characters has changed dramatically. So has her behavior and her attitude, from what I can gather. She's happy and productive.

Good thing her boss wasn't Donald Trump. He showed Melissa Rivers the door for such behavior.

Co-workers spill about sex

I was standing at the mirror, combing my hair and listening to a sex addict describe an "average" day in a radio interview. It was as stomach churning as you might expect, but then the interviewer said the addict's name. My hand froze in mid-air as I stared into my own shocked eyes.

Hey! I worked with that dude at my last newspaper! He was a sex addict? And he wrote a book about it?!

Not only did he write a book -- "America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life" -- but he's the third journalist I worked with at that paper to spill their sexual business so publicly.

The first was a real jaw-dropper: The book "Mozart in the Jungle: Sex Drugs, and Classical Music." The author worked at the paper less than a year and had been gone awhile when the book editor urgently called us over to her desk to see the galley proof that arrived, unannounced, in the mail. Yeah, we knew this chick was a little kooky, but we had no idea that her past included ... ahem, quoting Publishers Weekly:

"By age 16, the author of this alternately piquant and morose memoir was dealing marijuana, bedding her instructors at a performing arts high school and studying the oboe. Later, her blossoming career as a freelance musician in New York introduced her to a classical music demimonde of cocaine parties and group sex that had her wondering why she 'got hired for so many of my gigs in bed ...' "

Yeah. WOW. You never really know the people you work with, do you?

Then last year the paper's former movie critic penned "Accidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake I Ever Made." The book title says it all. I danced with her "mistake" -- a beautiful infant boy at the time -- to "I Will Survive" at a wedding.

But if baring the raw truth that her child was the result of sex with some random bar dude wasn't enough, she continued True Confession Time with a Modern Love essay for the New York Times. Entitled "Sexy Ribbon on the Buyout Package," in it she spilled about an affair she had with a co-worker that began when they met over drinks to discuss buyouts.

E-mails, texts and phone calls blazed across the country between present and former co-workers, primarily because, even though she didn't name the reporter, the description left no doubt as to who he was. Under subject lines and comments such as "OMG!" "WTF?" "Oh no she didn't!" and "They did it in the back seat of his car! Nasty!!" were discussions about the timing (Had he already filed for divorce when it started? Wait, was she the reason he filed?) and her state of mind (What was she thinking? Was this revenge? Why?)

WHY?

I guess the easy answer would be "because they can." You could say that's what journalists do: inform readers by telling good stories. That these stories were their own might make them more compelling.

I suppose it's what Alicia and I do, on a much less dramatic note: we try to engage and entertain readers by writing about things we've experienced, and maybe inspire rumination and conversation along the way. Truth is that A) my name and picture are on this blog, B) I have to face blog-skimming co-workers every day, and C) at my core I'm a good Southern girl who doesn't want to shame her mama. I might push the boundaries a little -- broken condom fears, talking about my friend Trouble, and my friend Gabrielle's visit to an orgy, among others -- and I'm sure I'll push them even more. But will I tell all, like my former co-workers? Nah. I still believe in the allure of mystery.

Your boss did what?

The scene: My first day on the job. As I stand at the copy machine trying to figure out which button did what, my new boss -- whom I had just met because she was on maternity leave when I interviewed -- sidles up and asks this question:

"I'm a perfect model size 8. What size are you?"

I stared. What?

This exchange set the tone for what was three years of workplace purgatory -- she told inappropriate personal stories while her employees squirmed in their seats; made arbitrary and capricious rulings about the focus and play of stories, often reversing decisions she had made just hours earlier; caused many people to work well into the night (we were a 9-to-6 operation) because of her lack of organization.

And she took any hint of criticism -- however diplomatic or constructive -- very badly. So you couldn't talk with her about any of it. My coworkers and I tried.

So, though the money was good, the opportunities the job offered fascinating and my other coworkers wonderful, I handled the situation this way: I found another job.

Was there a way to salvage the situation? Maybe. But I wasn't in a place to figure out this particular workplace relationship.

What would you have done?

Corporate love: How do they do it?

During the glorious Memorial Day weekend I met two girlfriends at a bar patio to lounge in the sun, sip beer and catch up. In time, the talk turned to men.

The two chicks work at the same huge company, but in different departments. After a brief discussion about the man the younger chick-- in her mid-20s -- has her eye on at the office, they began to map out strategy.

I had to set down my beer in amazement, because these two weren't kidding. They were talking about plausible reasons for the younger one to be on the guy's floor, near his office. They were talking about synchronizing lunch schedules and charting when this dude went to the cafeteria -- all with the goal of "bumping" into him.

I was impressed, but I was thinking this was sounding a little high school. Then I remembered those tactics worked then -- why wouldn't they work even better now, when we know about subtlety? But I still felt like I was missing an important piece of information.

"Why don't you just walk up to him and say hi?" I ventured. They both gave me pitying "oh, Deirdre" looks and responded in unison with a firm "NO."

I've worked for newspapers since college, so I've never really experienced the cultures of banking or other big businesses. My friends said their company is conservative, confining and more than a little dull. You can't just drop by a department where you don't have any business because it'll be obvious why you're there and you'll set tongues a' wagging. And while their cafeteria machinations might seem a bit much, how else will you get to see someone from another department, like, five floors down on a regular enough basis to decide if you might be interested? Besides, the plotting and planning is fun, a bright spot in what otherwise might be a "bleh" day.

Makes sense to me. That pre-dating dance we all do -- the one where we're circling each other, trying to figure out if we want to know more -- is difficult enough without the extra burden of a corporate culture hovering above it. And yet, people often find love at work, because that's where they spend most of their time.

So I'm curious. You single folks out there with careers in similar environments: How do you handle trying to date your co-workers?