WWQD?

There's a chick at work who kinda squicks my shit. She's nice and everything, but she just creeps me out. Sets off some internal "-ometer" that I don't even have a proper name for. Freakometer? Psychoometer? Nutjobometer" Call it what you will, but she makes it shriek, people.

I met her out back of the building, in the "nature preserve". She smokes. I smoke. Herded like the lepers that we are, there is a "smoking area" in the "nature preserve", in which we unregenerate butt-lovers occasionally congregate. As a result, we smoker-lepers inevitably become at least minimally acquainted with all the other smoker-lepers in the building or office park or colony or whatever. It's unavoidable, a water-cooler effect, but with stinky carcinogens instead of The Elixir of Life. If you smoke, you understand, if you don't, then God bless your sainted ass. I don't smoke often, but I see the squick chick out there every time I pass through the lobby - running office-y errands, meeting clients, going to the café, whatever - through the big glass doors, down there leaning against a tree in her rumpled Lerner Shops, puffing away.

So, I know right away that the squicky chick is a slacker, a bad worker. She can't be getting much done, as much as she sits out there smoking her cigarettes, big long 120's that take a fucking quarter-hour to extinguish. Factor in the data, too, that this lady has many, many animals at home. Don't misunderstand me - I am an animal lover of the first order. I have pets coming out of my sleek and sassy ass around here. But - and this is a big deal - I doubt that any of my co-workers know that I have animals at home just by sniffing me. Look, people: do not exit your house for your professional job smelling of catbox. Neither should you walk around all day with tufts - I said TUFTS, like, with dandruffy skin-clumps still attached - of animal hair all over your clothing. Before I even spoke to this woman, I knew that there was this whole "crazy cat lady" thing going on. I could smell it, literally. And see it.

I'm just sayin'.

So, one day, I'm sitting there smoking, she walks over and lights one, it's all hi, how are you, I am fine, how are you, I am fine, yadda yadda. Next day, it's hi, how are you, fine, how are you and then she starts going off, I mean seriously going off our of nowhere about all this confidential internal shit in her department and how bad everyone sucks and how she's applying for disability because she wants to get the fuck out of there and how her husband got disability and yadda yadda yadda. The kind of shit she should totally not be telling me, in both professional and personal senses. And she goes on, and on, and on...I'm talking, ten, fifteen minutes. In the middle of the day! I snuff out my cigarette in the grate of the "Smoker's Station", rather ostentatiously, making a big deal of it, and begin to back away. I'm moving up the stairs, attempting apologies - the long fucking goodbye - as she lights another one off the stub of her current smoke, and just keeps on talking.

Well, by this time Your Faithful Narrator was chewing her bloody foot off to get out of there...I don't have that kind of time, people, and I'm too well-bred to just tell her to fuck off and leave me alone. For me, the smoke break is "take a few puffs and run", not...not, "lie on the couch and tell me about your mother." So I cut her off - as nicely as possible - telling her that I had to get back to work, and, um good luck with all that, and I speed back to the elevator. Well, maybe she's just having a really bad day, think I. No biggie.

Oh, alas, but I soon came to see that every day is a bad day for squicky girl. The next time I go out to smoke, it's all about her intimate marital problems, and as the weeks have gone by we've spiraled out and out and on and into her credit card debt and her weight issues and her thyroid and her thwarted ambitions of ballet. And every day, I say virtually nothing; I just smile, and nod, and puff twice or thrice, and back away. It's becoming an uncomfortable ritual.

I feel like a heel about it, about being so insensitive to this person who obviously needs an outlet, but damn. Let's be reasonable. First and foremost, she squicks me out, and I don't want to be her best friend. Second, I find the nature of her personal revelations to be highly inappropriate for the level of intimacy we enjoy, which is virtually nil...and that squicks me out. I am in to personal space, both physically and psychically. Third, I don't have the time. I am busy, busy, busy when I am at work; I can't allow myself to be drawn into her back-fence conversational dramas every time I want to smoke a fucking cigarette (which is usually right after lunch).

Fourth, she squicks me out. Yes, I know I said it twice, but, people, there are major camel toe issues going on here, 'nuff said. And, look, she had half a cat-turd stuck to the toe of her boot today. All day. The top of the toe of her boot, front and center. And it was...moist. Fragrant.

So - if all this makes me a seem like a heartless cunt, so be it, but I can't have this going on. I must take action to nip this in the bud. Awful? Maybe. But personally, I call it "informed decisionmaking".

Anyway...the object lesson here?

I need to quit smoking.