Days Of My [Work] Wives

Without delving into the specifics of what I do for work, I work in the realm of case management and working with people.  I still work in the same place, the same place I was when I first started this journal back in September 2005.  The years have gone by, people have come and gone from my life and the work environment, and turnover there remains at an all-time high.  Still, work is my refuge, a place to where I can escape and temporarily leave behind the world that I know for an entirely different world altogether.  I am an introvert.  I always have been and always will be.  But you see, at work, one can’t do the job, at least not well, with an introverted personality.  I knew this going in and because I wanted to survive there and see how long I could make it in that environment, I had to develop and don an entirely different personality, just for work purposes.  Only a handful of people know that I do this.  The rest of that office thinks that I genuinely am this extroverted, social, comedian-type who thrives on social contact and interaction.  I want to say that some might have already perceived me to be this social butterfly of sorts, which naturally, I am not.  Still, in order for me to have any measure of success there, this is the persona I need to assume in the workplace and rest assured, I do it well.

Since Carmen, who I will always affectionately refer to as “Work Wife #1”, I have had had two other work wives, though neither would ever be as close to me as Carmen was.  This wasn’t intentional.  Those circumstances just sort of happened that way.  I was close to #2 and #3, each in some capacity, but never anything remotely resembling the relationship that Carmen and I shared for the decade that we were “together”.

Work Wife #2 was Christina.  Jackie would be #3.  If I think back a bit, Carmen left in late 2016, which means that I pretty much ran solo for about three years.  This isn’t to say that I didn’t make connections with other people.  During that time, I just didn’t have anyone close to me to be even remotely considered a work wife.  That would change in early 2020, right around the time that that COVID-19 thing was going to really impact the world.  Work had slowed down considerably once the pandemic and lockdown both became reality.  Things slowed down, but they never stopped.  Christina and I had been loners prior to the pandemic, in the sense that we had just grown accustomed to working by ourselves, just as most of our co-workers had.  I had plenty of time to get used to the idea again and I thrived being by myself again.  Our supervisor at the time decided that because things were so slow, that maybe it would have been convenient and just easier for us to go and do our work together.  That way, we could go into the community together, see clients who lived in the same vicinity, and not waste gas or resources by taking two cars to essentially go places that really weren’t that far apart.  And so came into reality, my relationship with Work Wife #2, in the post-Carmen area.  Our run lasted only about two years, when she would be promoted to supervisor, after our supervisor, the one who suggested our pairing, had been promoted and was ultimately shipped to another office.  Christina is now my supervisor and we remain close to this day, just in a different way than Carmen and I were.  Prior to our work marriage, I had known Christina and worked with her sporadically since 2008.

Jackie was Work Wife #3.  After Christina knew that she was going to be promoted, she felt compelled to make sure that I wasn’t going to be left to work by myself again.  I would not have minded that.  Still, Christina is also fully aware that I am an introvert, one of the few who knows my secret, though I think that in some strange way, she thought that pairing me with someone was actually a good thing.  I did not argue or challenge her when she made the decision to pair me with Jackie in March 2022, being that I’m not the type to challenge management.  Jackie was one of the newer workers amongst my group of immediate coworkers and while I think she knew what to do, at the time, she struggled to actually to do it, at least with any measure of confidence and certainty.  This job can be very complex and very overwhelming.  This is why there is an especially high turnover rate.  Some get burned out.  Some just want a new/better work experience.  Some people just can’t do it.  Jackie knew she could do the job.  In some way, I knew it too.  It would just take her a few months of doing the job and developing her style, before eventually, it all became second nature to her.  I was paired with her, not only as a form of security blanket but also as a form of social support.  You see, Jackie’s good friend, Daniella, had left in early March 2022, as she relocated to an entirely different county.  Jackie no longer had anyone to whom she could glom on.  I didn’t either with Christina having accepted her promotion.  Christina saw a match and perhaps, an opportunity.  What I saw, even from a distance, was that I was going to have to get used to yet another personality.

Christina is very much a strong-willed personality, who has all the confidence in the world and definitely no need for a sidekick.  Jackie has a similar confidence to her, though she is not as demonstrative with her confidence.  Neither one of them needed me, I suppose, in the sense that I wasn’t a crucial part to their getting their jobs done.  I was merely a physical presence to them, but also someone who would help them with the writing component of their jobs.  I don’t mean “help” to mean that they couldn’t do their own writing or complete their own reports.  No, the idea was very simple and one with which I was on-board almost immediately.  Christina knew of my affinity for writing and the joy that I have doing it.  She, like most, doesn’t care much for the process and the act of writing itself.  In fact, she hated it and to some degree, Jackie did too.  In knowing that I loved writing and putting reports together, Christina said that I could write her reports and that in trade, she would do all of the talking in the field, whether this was with her own clients or mine.  The introverted me could not have been any more excited.  I didn’t have to talk and all I really needed to do was write?  Well then, sign me up.  I’m all for it.  And that’s how it went for two years with Christina.

This arrangement continued when Jackie and I were paired up, because believe me as I said earlier, Jackie hated writing.  I’d even go so far as to say that she loathed it.  In contrast, she was ecstatic when she learned that I would become her sidekick, or I guess, her scribe, to be more accurate.  In the beginning and now that I think of it, for the duration of our work marriage, I subjected Jackie to a lot of ribbing, verbal jabs, and a lot of mean-spirited remarks.  In some way, I thought that by doing so, I was sort of toughening her up and preparing her for the job ahead and for potential confrontation from an angry client.  She took it all in stride and was the definition of a good sport.  Most women would have punched me for all the mean and hateful stuff I said, but I think that she fully understood my sense of humor as well as the reality that I never meant any of it.  Jackie left the department this past April, as she moved her life to Nevada.  She bought a condominium not far from Las Vegas, moved out of her parents’ home, and took a similar job within that same vicinity of where is now living.  Our marriage would only last 13 months, but in that time, we had an opportunity to become really close friends, even closer than either one of us would have imagined at the onset.  She is a genuinely good person and to my surprise, her departure was actually quite painful.  This is not to say that my break from Christina was not.  The main difference is that at least Christina is still in the office and she and I are still working together.  Jackie is now several hundred miles away in an entirely state.  She is no longer a physical presence and I think that’s what hurt in the first few weeks since she left.  I’ve since recovered and as of this day, we still converse daily, usually in the form of early morning text messages as I sit at my desk writing away.

Now, in the two-plus months since Jackie’s departure, I think I find myself in the midst of another pairing.  This pairing came out of the blue and was nothing that I had foreseen.  It didn’t develop organically like it did between Carmen and me.  My pairing with Christina stemmed from mere suggestion and it worked.  Jackie was assigned to me and in the end, we had great success working together.  As for my current situation, I think I am inching closer to someone who I think will be Work Wife #4.