I’ve told you about Josie, the crazy old woman who prowled the halls of my last job, ever watchful for someone doing something she felt they shouldn’t so she could lecture them about not doing it. The woman who had named herself guardian of the hallways and snack room. Keeper of the watering can. Master of the shredder. Defender of the coffee maker. Fear the Josie!

One day, one of my co-workers received a shipment from Amazon, some DVDs or games or something. We came back from lunch and he saw the box sitting at the front desk, since the receptionist hadn’t gotten around to delivering the afternoon packages yet. He said he’d just take it, save her a trip. Excited about his new toys, he opened the box and inspected his shipment. All was good and right with the world, and so we went back to our office. He tossed the empty Amazon box in one of the trash cans near the coffee area as we went past.

We sat down and started working. About an hour later, Josie walked into the door, holding a trash can in front of her. She walked over to my coworker, thrust the can under his nose and asked, “Is this yours?” He, of course, was a little perplexed.

“What? The trash can?”

“No, the box.”

He peered in and saw his name on the mailing label. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

“What’s it doing in here?”

There was a brief moment while we all contemplated that question.

“It’s… trash,” he explained, reasonably enough.

“Well, it’s taking up the entire trash can. Now there’s no room for any other trash in here. There needs to be enough space for everyone to throw away trash and I can’t be constantly emptying the trash cans all day. I need to keep these hallways clean…”

Yes, she was actually lecturing him because he had stupidly thrown trash into the trash can. Understand, there was quite a bit of room left for someone to throw in some more if, as she feared, said employee was walking down the hall and was suddenly overcome with the urge to throw away a vast amount of garbage, right now, and simply couldn’t wait until they returned to their office. You know how that can be.

Finally her tirade wound down and my co-worker apologized for making the foolish mistake of putting trash into a receptacle designed for that exact purpose. Josie continued to stand there, the trash can held at arm’s length in front of her. My co-worker looked at her, wondering what else there was. She gave the can a little shake. He slowly reached into the can and pulled his empty Amazon box—the only thing in there—out of the trash can. That seemed to do the trick as she turned and waddled out without another word. The weirdness over, he tossed his empty box into his own trash can (which was the exact same size as the one whose honor Josie was trying to protect), where he comfortably managed to throw away large amounts of other refuse throughout the day.

As I was leaving that night, I peeked into the abused trash can on my way past the coffee area and saw a lone paper towel balled up at the bottom. Good thing she made him take the box out. That could have gotten ugly.

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Note: All names have been changed to protect the stupid.

Now that I’m safely out of my last job and have moved far enough away that they can no longer get hold of me, I can tell you about some of the insanity that went on in that place. And quite possibly one of the biggest balls of crazy in the building was a woman named Josie.

Josie was an older woman, easily in her 60s. She was kind of short and portly, with a frizzy white puffball of hair and a gravelly voice that she loved to exercise any chance she got. There were no short conversations with Josie. If she started talking to you, you might as well pull up a chair, ’cause you were in for the long haul. Now, to this day, I’m not entirely certain what Josie’s actual official job title was. I asked around and never got a satisfactory answer. She was married to another employee who’d also been there since the dawn of time, so I guess she sort of had built-in tenure. Still, she did stuff to earn her paycheck. She watered the plants. She handled the shredding duties. And she apparently decided at some point that it was her responsibility–nay, sacred duty–to badger everyone about keeping the place clean.

Understand, we had a hired cleaning crew that came in every night to straighten the place up. No excuse to be a slob, I know, and we weren’t a messy bunch, but we did have people to handle this sort of thing. But Josie had decided that it was up to her to make sure the place remained spotless in between visits by the cleaners. Her main weapon in that regard was The Sign. Josie put signs on everything she felt was in her jurisdiction. “DO NOT LEAVE DISHES IN SINK!” a sign would scream at you from above the faucet. “PUT DISHES BACK IN CABINET!” a sign directly next to the first sign would say. There were signs on the microwave, the coffee maker, the utensil drawer, the plants (”DO NOT MOVE! DO NOT WATER!”), the chairs in the break room (”DO NOT REMOVE CHAIRS FROM BREAK ROOM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!”), and pretty much anything that held still for more than five minutes and Josie decided fell within her sphere of influence. These were her halls, dammit, and she was going to keep them clean.

Of course, I knew none of this the first time I crossed her path. I’d only been on the job for about two weeks. I’d never met, seen, nor even heard of her. So I was rather surprised one morning when this gray-haired little troll waddled into my office and brandished a dirty bowl at me.

“Is this yours?” she asked with no preamble. I looked up and was confronted with a plastic Tupperware bowl that looked to have some oatmeal detritus in it. I’m not used to having strange women assault me with filthy servingware, but I tried to be polite.

“Uh, no, sorry,” I said and attempted to return to work, figuring the matter closed. She was looking for the owner of the bowl. I was not said owner, therefore our business was concluded. As I said, I didn’t know Josie yet.

“Because it was in the sink,” she informed me. She appeared put out by this, although it seemed to me to be a perfectly logical place for a dirty bowl. I can understand her being cheesed about it being in the cabinet, or the fridge, the closet, maybe, but the sink made sense to me.

“Is that not where it goes?” I asked, not realizing the magnitude of the mistake I had just made.

“Dirty dishes need to be washed. I have to keep this place clean and I don’t have time to follow around cleaning up after you.” I wanted to point out that she wasn’t cleaning up after me, since the bowl wasn’t mine, but she was just working up steam and wasn’t about to be derailed. “You can’t go leaving dirty dishes in the sink. If it’s dirty, you need to wash it. I have too much to do without having to clean up behind you. So if you use a dish, you need to wash it, and then put it back in the cabinet. It’s my job to keep this place neat and I can’t be always doing your dishes.” And on and on it went, the same basic message, repeated various ways.

And again, I had no idea who this woman was. This was a complete stranger who had barged unannounced into my office and was hectoring me about a dish that I had never seen before she shoved it under my nose. I began to wonder if a crazy homeless woman had somehow gotten into the building and wandered into my office. That made more sense than a rational fellow employee berating me about a dirty bowl.

Eventually she wound down, apparently running out of different ways to say the same thing. She stood glaring at me, seeming to expect something. Frankly I was at a loss. “Uh, might be one of my co-workers’. I’ll ask them when they get in,” I tried.

“You do that,” she said. “Because it’s not my job to clean up after you–”

“Got it,” I said, trying to head her off before she lapped herself and started her diatribe all over again. “I’ll ask them.” That seemed to be good enough because she turned and shuffled out, giving me a suspicious, angry look the whole way. I can only assume that she then went from office to office, asking anyone who happened to be in the building if the bowl was theirs and giving her speech, regardless of the answer.

When my co-workers did turn up a little later, I asked if there was a crazy woman on staff who would be upset about a dirty bowl in the sink. “Ah, you met Josie,” they said knowingly. They didn’t seem too surprised by her reaction. Ultimately, the bowl turned out to belong to my co-worker, Jennifer, who got the exact same speech I got when she claimed ownership of it. Jen apologized and dutifully washed the offending dish, getting an earful the entire time. When the bowl was safely stored in Jen’s backpack (she had brought it from home the day before) and Josie had run out of air, the crisis seemed to finally have been averted. There were no more dirty dishes in the sink and all was right and good in the world.

Until the day we used the Christmas tree skirt. But that’s another story.

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