Like a Boss

It occurred to me yesterday that Red Light is rather bossy.

This epiphany is a delayed reaction to when, late Tuesday afternoon, she called to say she, Painted Rock Lady, Talker and a newer resident I’ve not yet assigned a name, are planning a Memorial Day Barbeque.

Okay?

"Can you make a flyer for us?"

Sure.

"How long do you think it will take you?"

Cue quite a lengthy pause as my mind processed what I knew she meant by "How long?"

Many years of working under unreasonable bosses has taught me what those words mean. Plus, based on instances with Red Light in the past, incidents I’ve overlooked, let slide, I knew she was expecting me to stop whatever I was doing and make the flyer NOW, putting pressure on me, giving me a deadline, get it done lickety split, speaking like a boss.

The first instance of showing herself to be impatient/pushy, was in the Community Room when they were serving hot dogs at the bingo break. I mentioned I don’t eat hot dogs, that I instead make carrot dogs.

She asked for the recipe.

Okay.

No sooner than I got back to my unit I get a text, "Did you forget to send me the recipe?"

Jesus F Christ!, thought I, but knocked the receipe out, sent it to her and, since she seemed to be in such a hurry, I asked a few days later how she liked the carrot dogs. She said she’d not made the them because she didn’t have all the ingredients.

Well, if you didn’t have all the ingredients — which I’d told you when you initially asked what a carrot dog was what the ingredients are, then why the rush for the recipe?

To date, I don’t believe she ever made them.

Then there was the time when the Baker and I restarted the residents facebook page and I began adding photos taken at bingo.

Red Light asked that I also send her the photos.

What she does with them I have no idea, don’t care but, not only did she ask me to send her what photos I’d taken, but followed through with "Don’t forget to send me the photos" as soon as I got back to my unit and continued to do so thereafter if she didn’t immediately get the photos until I began getting photos to her a priority — sometimes sending while still in the bingo room taking photos, just to get her off my back.

So there I was on Tuesday being asked how long it would take me to bang out a flyer and, looking out the patio window as Red Light was on the phone with me making the request, I saw she and the other ladies were standing around downstairs, looking up at my unit.

Thank the Lord I’m upstairs and most of them can’t climb stairs, thought I. Otherwise, I’d have had this HOA looking group of white ladies knocking at my door, barging in, hovering over me until the flyer was done.

At any rate, I thought fast, threw a decent looking flyer together, got dressed and walked it down to them.

It took me about half an hour to compose, design, print, with their mulling around downstairs the whole entire time.

In their hands, hot off the press, they scattered to post the flyers in strategic places, and walk around handing out.

In a way it’s nice that the group thought of me as capable of getting the job done and I don’t mind helping the ladies out but Damn! — short notice AND pressure.

Red Light can grate on one’s nerves, which is probably why she and Talker are no longer BFF’s, and I don’t have near as much contact with her as Talker did and I’m beginning to feel annoyed.

At any rate, I’ve put up long enough with how impatient and pushy and bossy Red Light has been. I’ll be putting the brakes on playing by her rules, starting with taking my own sweet time in getting bingo photos to her.

Red Light is not the boss of me.