Cake and dysfunction

I attended a division-wide birthday party this morning. Although I enjoy my immediate department of co-workers, our extended family is pretty dysfunctional. I'm lucky because my office is in a stately old building in the middle of campus, overlooking the busy quadrangle. The rest of our division is stuck in a hot, old house in an untraveled corner of campus.

The close quarters must breed pettiness over there, b/c news reaches me fairly often about the bad behavior and turf wars. By comparison, my department, though full of strong personalities, really does cooperate pretty well. I guess we're a healthy mix while the people across the street mostly are, well, how do I say it nicely? The majority of them are Junior League bitches.

So we went over to mingle with the matching haircut people--many of these ladies are my age but look 5-10 years older. It must be related to their hair. I have a lot of ire built up toward them, which is somewhat unfair. They've only done a handful of petty and obnoxious things to me, but I have several years' worth of annoyance built up from working with the same types at other jobs: the clueless and complete sense of entitlement. The leaving work early to get regular pedicures. The name-dropping. The incessant chatter about little junior, or planning to have a little junior. Worst of all, the talk of dieting. New diet, failed diet, need for diet, speculation on so-and-so's diet.

Oh, I could go on but would be giving them more attention than they deserve. I was glad we didn't have cake, though. Instead there were tiny quiches, fruit, and bagels. The matching haircuts sat on one side of the room, and the secretaries on the other. I sat with the secretaries.