(Almost) A pack of four

Our small confined office really isn't like an 'office' at all. It's
an an abundance of laughter, gaiety, silliness, swearing, tantrums,
rude remarks and gossip. It's an office with four, very different,
women. On my left is 56 year old Nora, a Conservative deep sea diving
Catholic who's biding her time to retirement. She's a Queen of
Diamonds. She goes to Mass as regular as she goes diving. She's in the
Red Sea at the moment. She plays bridge on Tuesdays nights where she
has one tipple too many and strolls in late on Wednesday mornings.
That's her week over. She does a job share with Lisa who works the rest
of the week. She sits opposite her, diagonal to me. Lisa, a Jack of
Hearts, is a year older than me and has a one year old baby girl that
hasn't yet mastered sleeping through the night so Lisa isn't very
coherent after lunch time. Most of Lisa's mornings are taken up
standing outside, infusing herself with the nicotine she's denied
herself all week. Married six months and she realised her husband was a
bit of a health freak. Just as he realised she was a bit of cleaning
feud. Her desk is immaculate. She swears a lot. Apparently she's as
quiet as a lamb when she goes home. She isn't here. F***ing this and
F'ing that. People tend to piss her off a bit, she likes people to work
her way or she gets mad, very mad so she has to shop on eBay. It used
to be the three of us. The newest edition to the office is our Ace of
Spades boss Joanne, or 'Jo' as she likes to be called. She sits in
front of Lisa, opposite to me. It wasn't easy for Jo being the new
person in a small room. For some reason we can be incredibly bitchy. I
blame it on the enclosed walls. Nothing to do except look at white
walls, it would make anyone a little crazy. The first words that came
from Jo's mouth were 'hello' followed by 'my fianc? dumped me'. Being
women and caring we all clucked round her, projecting sympathy, its
harder now that we've discovered it was twelve years ago. She's 38 now
and hasn't had a man since. Despite initial difficulties in settling
her in, we all gel together quite well. Talking of crazy, I'm the joker
of the pack, I make people laugh, or rather laugh at me. I don't mind
that, its makes the day go quicker. I'm usually buried under the papers
on my desk half tuned into the conversation. I had hoped Organisational
Skills would be available under staff development this year; I could
have done Spanish but I have enough trouble with speaking English. I
can't see Lisa or Jo from behind my computer and no one can see each
others screen. That took a lot of planning. It's a very busy office but
being in the creative field we have to have a lot of 'harvests' that
are usually based outside if its sunny or in the pub if not. Otherwise
people get shirty if you tell them to go away. Like everything has to
be now, its gets very annoying. We have fine tuned how to make
ourselves look extremely busy, about the only thing we've all got in
common.