Work Spouse Abandonment

Tuesday, October 03, 2017

I've been looking up on what to call when someone close to you quits a setup where you two met. 

Break-up?
Moving on?
Getting dumped? 
Graduating? 

Extrapolate that moving business to employment and you have a work spouse situation in hand. 

Work Spouse is supposedly a very real construct, enough to excavate Drake, Kanye, Ryan Gosling and Rob Downey Jr's memes explaining the idea. I wouldn't have known the factual accuracy until today ofcourse, when I ran a search to realize that this supposed construct is linked to higher efficiency at work, overall well being and happiness, and multiple orgasms at work (about the last one). 

My work spouse divorced me last weekend. 
In other words, she quit and moved on from the current job (which I still have). Leaving me single, a total train wreck, minus alimony and other benefits that spouses are apparently entitled to, sulking swine. Confession: I don't know how to fill this gap. Is there a Tinder for HR managers that I can get or recommend my office folks? Is there a home for those of us abandoned by our work spouses to meet and find a rebound? I don't know. I don't know anything, anymore. 

Honestly, as a work spouse, I expected half her chair, her desk and even the CPU with 300 gb space. I'm down to the last 13 gb and my system will crash any day. This divorce thing sucks dead monkey balls and I am going to lose my system soon. Where's that rebound website for work spouses guys? Why are the Venture Capitalists not investing in an idea like this? 

My work spouse was the life of our organization. For someone who hated everyone more than me, and didn't bother speaking to anyone for a year, it's a Christmas miracle that she attracted so much attention. I'd like to think it was her rack but then again, people only mourned the loss of sunshine and smile and not the tits in their face. I suppose people truly have a heart. I won't know. Mine's freshly broken by all my friends moving in all possible directions- UK, Bombay, Gurgaon. I also suppose people can hide facts very well. It's the bloody rack, I'm convinced. 

Her divorce was akin to triple talaq, where she shoved her resignation via mail, took me to a corner and announced the same, and packed her stuff. "Bye bitches", she said and sent a mail with a mic drop gif of Obama, thanking the bosses and the others for books. 

What a classy af exit. 

This morning, I heard the old office handyman vent for over half an hour about how he will miss her, the one who would make our entire floor laugh (because she was a total lunatic, he didn't add). There goes half an hour of my productivity and the jaw that ached to keep that face in a position of constant smile and reassurance, "bilkul sahi kaha" (you're absolutely right). 

He also went on to add how he's removed the UPS of another colleague who left work the same day, with that of the Director because, "Woh to ab aane nahi wali." ("She's not going to come back now")

Followed by our office guy, who got me tea one and hour late than the usual time. The man has no fucks to give since my work spouse left. 

That lead to every single person in the building enquiring if I'm doing okay, why do I look so sad, how am I coping? Are unicorns real? Is my new hairstyle real? 

Thankfully, there was a birthday and two cakes to distract people from my misery, none of which helped me personally. However, it did take attention off my face, a sulking teenager left in charge of a building. 

It's not as much her exit that upset me as people coming in my face (that's what she said, our inside joke). I mean, is subtlety a virtue? Can we bring it back in fashion? I don't understand why we do have to send painful reminders of what we don't have. Yes, she's moved on. Yes, I feel like shit. Yes, I don't want to talk to people. Can we now discuss weather? The firecrackers? Your A/C? 

I channelized all my energy into staring at my phone. At the man who wanted discount off the books we make only to tell me that he just wants a drink with me, insipid job descriptions sent by LinkedIn, Amazon reminding me of the sales I won't participate in, Sagar Ratna on discounted Idli combos. 

I also participated in two smoke breaks, one where I bumped into the Director who was ever so curious about where we all were (smoking, to kill ourselves, just in case work doesn't, you know). 

I'm not even sure whether my face was a dead giveaway to how much I was sulking internally or whether it was the doing of my period cycle, but something was amiss. Couldn't pin point that till the end of the day. To shake things up, I stayed ten extra minutes at work, something that my old work spouse and I never did, as a rule of thumb. 

"I need to get this person and the amount of fun I've had out of my system, before it gets to me how much fun I've had", quite literally all that I repeated to myself post 6 pm. The days are getting short, as indicated by the presence of the sweet potato seller. The corn guy has been replaced by the peanut seller. Short days, long grieving, even longer day of unhappiness. Men on Tinder, you gotta take lessons from my work spouse. She made me light up like no one else. Is it literary genius to ignore a moment when I could really do with a sad face emoji? It better be. It took me a whole minute to ignore the temptation.  

I exited, good twenty minutes after the designated time of exit to find the receptionist sitting at the desk. I stepped in her room for fingerprint scanning. 

"How was your day today?"

"Huh?"

"How was your day without her? Did you miss her?"

"CAN YOU ALL FUCKING STOP? IT WAS SHIT. YES, I MISSED HER LIKE CRAZY. BUT YES, LIFE GOES ON. UNICORNS DO NOT EXIST. SHE WILL HAVE TO FUCKING WORK AT HER NEW JOB. GOOD LUCK TO HER FOR FINDING MY REPLACEMENT."

"It was okay. Yeah."



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