KitKat Junky

After my last roommate in the office had been transferred to an office in the North of the country I had been on my own. I was quite happy with that, could do whatever I wanted with the room. So I had filled the empty spaces on the wall with prints of painting by Kandinsky and Joan Miro and could listen to an Amsterdam radio station that played Indian music all day. These were great days.

I knew these days had ended when my manager entered the room with "Let me introduce you to your new roommate. June, can you come in?"
There she was, June. I remembered her quite well from the first years of my life at the tax office. She was still as big and ugly as ever.
I gave a big smile and got up: "Well hello June! That's a long time ago I've seen you. How are things?"
The manager nodded approvingly: "It's obvious that you two know each other. Maybe you can help June getting started? There will be some files delivered within an hour, but she will need pen, pencils and so on. I understood:  "No problem. Do you want me to introduce her to everybody?"
The manager shook his head: "No need, you were the last one she needed to meet, being in the outskirts of the office."

Soon I saw that she had not changed at all. My art had to go, was replaced by a picture of her two sons and a picture of the office in which we both had started our career. The radio had to be on a channel with popsongs from the eighties and nineties. I went along with it all, love my peace, too lazy for quarrels.
Her workdays were filled a bit differently to mine. She liked to talk and she liked even more to talk a lot. I was not perfect in doing this, so she would phone her sister and some former colleagues to update the gossip.

A lot was about her wondering why everyone was always losing weight like anything and she was doing this crash diet and she was not even losing an ounce. This would be also discussed with me, at least she tried to. Then there were the health issues; she sometimes phoned that she was ill and would describe what kind of fluids were leaving her body; enough to lose your appetite for some hours. Once she asked me if I took showers with my daughters. She did this with her boys, who were of the same age as my children, ten and twelve. She described how she would clean their willies. I told her that my daughters probably would kill me if I would suggest something like that.

It was amazing how she managed the refurbishment of the family's house. The husband did the work, but for everything he needed her approval of his ideas. So he would make drawings of this and faxed to them to our office. June had a good look and would phone him to tell him what she thought of it. This went on for a few weeks.
Later there was the matter of a nice house in the neighbourhood of the village she lived in of which the owner had died. She phoned her sister who was a colleague in another tax office which was in charge of handling cases in her village and asked her to have a look into the files of the family who were inheriting the house.
Soon she was rubbing her hands: "So they are heavily in debt, you say. I think I will go to the estate agent. I feel I could get this place for a very nice price. Thanks, Sis!"

All in all there was not a lot of time for the work she was supposed to do and I was happy that she was working part-time, which  made it possible for myself to get enough work done in a week. The weeks went on and there came the time when the management had to give an evaluation of the work. Of course they were not happy with her productivity. We were supposed to handle from five to seven cases per day and June did an average of three in a week. A talk was held in front of me.
She defended herself fiercely: "But that's in three days, not in five!"
The manager shook his head: "I would expect fifteen to twenty-one cases being done."
"But I lack knowledge. They never really prepared me properly for this job. I would like a brushing course."
The manager laughed aloud: "I happen to know that you hardly worked the last three years. You have done every course there was on offer. So there's no way I'm going to let you do another one!"

After this talk she became ill for a longer period. I was quite happy on my own again. Being alone never has bothered me.
Once in a while other colleagues would come over to my room and we would discuss cases while drinking coffees. So it was not suprising when colleague Garth entered my room with two coffees in his hands and a file under his arm.

I thanked him for the coffee and he asked about June. I offered to phone her and ask about her illness.
"Oh no, don't! You don't want me to vomit over your desk!"
I had to laugh and took a sip of the coffee.
Garth was sitting behind her desk and played with the grips of the drawers.
"Hey, it's not locked! But look at that! You won't believe this!"
He opened the drawer completely and I walked over to have a look.
It was completely filled with KitKat Chunkies and wrappers of KitKat Chunkies.
I laughed along with Garth: "I think I start to understand why June can't lose weight."
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