In honor of the Oscars, I give an award

In case there was any doubt about how closely my former job resembled Office Space, I'm offering this Swingline Award to Tyler Gifts for outstanding achievement in screwing people over.

This is going to require a short trip into the past. First, let me say that the catalog department at Tyler consists of five people: Rochelle Fitsimmons, the buyer; Rachel Rutger, her assistant; Karen Samuels, the graphic designer; Marcus Paul, the photographer; and Rod Tyler, the putz. From what I understand, about two weeks ago a fifth member was pulled from customer service and added to this group to supposedly be trained by Rachel to help her. People on the inside, who are not ignorant to the ways of the morons at the top, saw this move as a possible threat to one of the people already in the group - most likely Rochelle for not much reason other than she makes the most money.

They pretended things were okay for a while, but apparently the tension got to be too much for Rochelle and she went to Rod to see what the deal was.

Based on what I've been told, and what I know of the players, this is a loose paraphrasing of the conversation.

"Rod, are you planning on firing someone in our department and replacing her with this girl from customer service?"

"Uuuuhhhh. Ummmmm."

"Are you going to fire Rachel?"

"Ur, aaaahhh..."

"Are you going to fire me?"

"Well, since you've figured it out, you might as well pack up your things and go this morning."

I've obviously picked up enough of the story to offer this recreation of events, but when I originally just heard that Rochelle had been let go on Friday, the image of "the Bobs" from Office Space (you can hear the quote by clicking on the title of this post). So the above Swinline goes to you, Tyler Gifts, for consistently meeting the low expectations everyone has of you.

One other note. Once before, I aluded to how much Rod hates confrontation. Knowing this, he probably left for the day before Rochelle did, and probably thanked God that it was winter so he could walk out with his coat in his hand to camouflage the urine stain on his pants from his no-doubt chiuaua-esque reaction to having to admit his shadyness. That's just a guess, but the image makes me smile.