the saga of dashing don part IV: what crazy looks like

it's fall of 2004. the front office takes up about half of the total office space, which is not large. i sit at the front desk near the door and bookcases block the conference area in the front office from the desks of nadia (the scheduler), "wendy" (the legislative director aka 'the fat one'), and of course, good ol' don, who has a seat by the window on my side of the office but who blocks most of it with a looney pyramid of old office furniture pieces. it's quite honestly an insane thing to behold. he began building his den of solitude i'm told when wendy moved in and got the desk across from his.

first he stacked three shelves on his desk (which faced her). that's about three feet or more for a dividing wall. then he put a series of those "inbox/outbox" things on top of the wall for extra seclusion. nothing was ever placed in the boxes, which were wooden, not plastic. the shade was always pulled down most of the way over the window at his desk, and what little light that was let through below was blocked in part by his computer monitor, which he placed on the window sill rather than the desk, and the small pyramid of otherwise useless wooden desk components that were filled with preposterous lobbyist trinkets: a paper clip dispenser from 1998 from an ohio waste management company; a squeezable mini police car from an indiana patrolmen's association, etc. another small bookshelf was brought in to make the avenue to crazyland just a little more difficult to maneuver into.

but from my desk, i can see to don's computer monitor through an obvious hole in the bookshelf perimeter created by the need to access built-in file cabinets on the wall that don and i share. so i can see quite clearly when, after bitching out other staffers for "not doing shit" up front, he proceeds directly to the cave for an hour-long bout of microsoft solitaire.

towards the end of a work day, it's common for don to approach you and ask, in creepy monotone, "so where you buyin'?" implying of course that you are to buy him drinks somewhere. while this may work at first when you're new and don't fully realize the extent to which this man is bonkers, it fails by fall of 2004. when you decline you may be asked "now: where's my money?" which, incidentally, was one of the first things i was asked in my interview and neglected to mention in part I. this is a classic component of the dashing don repetoire. the same deal happens with interns, some of which were in high school, mind you. it goes like this:

don: so where's my money?
victim: what?
don: my payment.
victim: what payment?
don: well i got you this job, didn't i? so where's my money?
victim: ...
don: cash. no checks, no credit cards. cash. where's my cash?

as you can see, this could go on forever. and it would, until he was distracted or otherwise interrupted. it was offensive to be on the receiving end of, but far more creepy to see happen to, for instance, a 16 year old intern in the office with the 2-week girl scouts congressional internship program. granted, not as creepy as the legislative assistant who was fired in fall 2004 for looking at hard core pornography during office hours at a central, visible computer while this intern and others were working (and, frankly, any given hour of any given day)... but creepy.

to get back to the program: it's fall of 2004 and it's election time so the whole office is to fly to the district for about two weeks of campaigning ... and quite a bit of drinking as well. but when nadia asks don when she should schedule his ticket for, he ignores her and leaves the room - a tactic he had always used with wendy but only recently he perfected with the rest of the staff. after similar experiences she decides he's not coming and schedules the rest of us. the campaign is fun - but the boss is pissed as hell that don didn't show. then on election day, mid-day, he shows up for the victory party. he's got a girlfriend out there, see. had flown in earlier we learned after the fact. and in a conversation with the boss quite recently she mentioned he had done the same before - once the boss tried to call him and he wouldn't return her calls all weekend. then she ran into him at the grocery store at home in the district and he looked at her and just nodded and took off without saying anything. just left the store. that apparently happened right around when i got hired in may 2004.

but by election time, don almost never answers her phone calls and ignores her emails. just like he ignores the rest of us unless 1) asking for money 2) asking for free drinks 3) ordering us to get back to work before playing hours of fucking solitaire.

oh, and it's none of this 'spider solitaire' bullshit. it's the old skool, baby. and he has the card style set on the "haunted castle" theme - with the bats. isn't that creepy? that's fucking creepy.