If they happened to provide similar additional services as Bill Clinton's employees, then so much the better.
That was eight weeks ago. Eight long, long weeks.
I'd hired Nina. She was some sort of generic Asian- I don't keep up with the latest models- and I figured that as a worst-case-scenario, I'd at least get access to a cheap fried rice recipe. She also made two very good points during the interview, probably because the air conditioning was on too high and the top she was wearing was far too tight.
Upon taking note of these two points- well rounded points at that- a white noise had filled my ears and I hadn't really heard anything in response to my interview questions. Frankly, I'm not 100% certain my gaze was raised above neckline level for the duration of the interview. She'd given me a copy of her resume and it was only three weeks after I hired her that I went back to review it and realised it was written in crayon.
By that point, it was getting too late. I couldn't quite put my finger on the problem. On one hand, she was as dense as a neutron star and I'd passed gas that had more initiative than her. On the other hand, or in two hands, or possibly burying my face between and making motorboat noises, were her other qualities.
The first sign of trouble was when I had asked her to copy a file and found her at the machine half an hour later feeding the 30th ream of paper into the machine because "you didn't tell me how many copies." The second was when I arranged to meet her at an Indian restaurant downtown to pass on some file information to save having to travel all the way back to the office and back out again. After she was an hour late, I found her outside still pulling at the door ineffectually and claiming it was broken because she thought the sign that said "Push" was a traditional Indian word meaning "restaurant".
This was somewhat offset by her propensity to wear low-cut shirts with push-up bras, and I had to privately speculate what kind of aeorodynamic tension-load engineers had worked out how to push that much up without the supporting garment exploding under the strain like the Hulk's stripper cousin. Whatever material they had used must have some kind of industrial application in suspension bridges.
If she turned suddenly they moved hypnotically, like a lava lamp or a water bed that had just had a medicine ball dropped on it, the lingerie creaking and creating a yawning abyss of cleavage which had given me pause to speculate whether yelling "HELLO!" into them would be followed by a lengthy echo.
One day I'd gone in to find out why she'd paid an invoice from "Mr Squiggle" for "Handwriting Lessons" and she'd turned suddenly and the white noise had rushed to my ears and suddenly I'd realised it was five hours later and she'd gone home and I was still there.
But the final straw came when I switched on the office computer to find that she'd used the desktop area as a dumping ground and I decided to move them into a single folder, on the desktop, marked "New Folder". The next day I had come in to the office to start work on a new case involving a jealous wife, a soon-to-be-ex-husband, and beauty pageant contestant evidently named "Cinnamon Buns" but whose birth certificate read "George Williams", to find her in a panic.
"All my stuff is gone!" she had exclaimed.
"No, it's in a folder on the desktop," I replied. "It was the only folder left on the desktop. And was called 'New Folder'."
"Oh, that? I thought some virus had deleted my stuff and made that folder, so I deleted it."
For once, I was speechless and not from gazing below her neckline.
"Wait, there was only one folder on the desktop, and rather than look in it to see what was in it, you deleted it?"
"And emptied the trash to make sure," she said proudly. "No virus is getting past me!"
"Nina, what were all those files?"
"Ummmm... nothing important, I don't think. Just some templates. And some music."
"Oh, good."
"And the tax and accounting information. Oh, and all your invoices. And those surveillance photos you said the newspapers were coming to get this afternoon for half a mil. What is half a mil anyway, is that like a metric reference?"
My blood froze.
"Why wouldn't you look in the folder before you deleted it?" I'd half screeched, half shouted.
"Because I didn't make it and if I didn't, who else could?"
"Who else works in this office, Nina? Whose name is on the door?"
"I've seen the door. It says Tunk and then something in Russian underneath."
"You're reading it from the wrong side of the glass, Nina."
"Oooooooooooooooh. Is it you? You work here, right?"
"Yes. I work here too."
"Cool. Do I get a prize?"
"That depends if you think 'redundancy' is a prize."
"Isn't he an R&B artist?"
"So you saw a change and you didn't call me? Or ask me when I came in?"
"Well, I was pretty sure a virus did it. I'm Asian and we're good with computers."
"Viruses don't make consolidated folders, Nina."
She arched her back, put her arms up in the air, and stretched out. "Oh. But I should be at lunch now anyway, so can you be a gem and change it back to how it was before while I'm out?" she said.
I seethed. I raged. I screamed "NINA, there are kindergarteners who are more functionally capable than you are on a standard day. The only difference between you and a mentally challenged Golden Retriever is that the dog can be housebroken! You're fired!"
Unfortunately, it was at that point that I realised that it was now 10pm and she'd gone home hours before and I was still standing in the same spot where she'd reached up to stretch at midday.
I managed to recover the files, but I never managed to fire Nina. By the time my brain could overtake my libido, it was always too late. I guess the old saying was true. God gave man two heads, but only enough blood to think with one of them at a time.
