Prozac Girl and the Raving Psycho Bitch

If you were hoping I'd be writing about my dueling personalities, I'm sorry to disappoint you...

But this is more of a "Tortoise and the Hare" kind of story.

The main character is Prozac Girl---our tortoise, if you will. Prozac Girl likes to work, and she takes her new job very seriously. In the course of her training, she wrote step-by-step instructions for each of her tasks, had them checked for accuracy and placed them neatly in a report folder that is already bent and scuffed from being opened and closed so many times. She still doesn't quite know what she's doing half the time, but she does the other half quite well.

Prozac Girl works quietly in her cubicle all day, occasionally making her presence known with a giggle, or with a conscientious question about her work. She doesn't socialize with her coworkers unless they seek her out for conversation (in which case they find her to be surprisingly warm), and she doesn't waste company time with personal calls because she hates talking on the phone and wants to get her work done.

She's slow, but she's thorough and accurate.

One cubicle over, the Raving Psycho Bitch never shuts up. She shares personal information with anyone who'll listen, confiding even to the floors, the walls, and the air as if to her closest friend. It seems Psycho Bitch thinks she'll cease to exist if she ever stops talking and demanding attention.

Prozac Girl wishes Psycho Bitch would cease to exist.

When the boss asks Psycho Bitch to do something she doesn't want to do, she either refuses to do it or complains loudly until the task is completed. While Psycho Bitch complains, or smokes, or tries to dump her work on someone else, or goes on a tirade against the boss, Prozac Girl continues working, slowly but steadily, using that time to keep up with her growing work queue.

Psycho Bitch clearly feels threatened by Prozac Girl and tries to undermine her with not-so-subtle tactics. She snatches up Prozac Girl's easy assignments between smoke breaks, trying to build up her performances scores the way the Chinese build up the protein content in pet food with melamine. Every evening, Psycho Bitch announces to everyone how many referrals she's completed that day. And, if she feels the number is too low, she qualifies it with a recap of the horribly difficult tasks she was forced to undertake in addition to her other grueling work.

The first time Prozac Girl completed more referrals in a day than Psycho Bitch, the accomplishment did not go unnoticed. "Well, you don't have to do all the things I have to do," Psycho Bitch whined. Prozac Girl smiled to herself, refraining from congratulating Psycho Bitch on all her smoke breaks, temper tantrums and episodes of personal drama, taking pleasure in her secret sarcasm.

When she overhears Psycho Bitch indirectly blaming her for things she herself did wrong, Prozac Girl fumes silently in her cubicle. Sometimes she confronts Psycho Bitch, innocently asking "Did I mess something up?" Psycho Bitch never gives her a direct answer, but Prozac Girl doesn't worry...she's confident Psycho Bitch isn't fooling anyone.

Prozac Girl is particularly disturbed by Psycho Bitch's use of the word "literally." For example, Psycho Bitch once declared "My back is literally killing me."

Oh, how Prozac Girl wished it were true!

When things become unbearable, Prozac Girl sends her boyfriend text messages and voice mails packed with even more profanity than usual. Cussing makes Prozac Girl happy, and if she says "fuck" enough times, her anger turns into a bittersweet, triumphant amusement that motivates her to work even harder.

Prozac Girl is confident she'll win out in the end. The Psycho Bitch, like the hare, is overly confident in her worth and fails to see how Prozac Girl is catching up with her. She may be a just lowly temp now, but they'll be glad to have her when the time comes to fire that Crazy Raving Psycho Bitch. And if they never have the sense to fire her, Prozac Girl reminds herself, "I don't want to work for those goddamn idiots anyway."