I work in the office at a laboratory that does testing under some pretty strict regulations. Occasionally, we do testing services for companies in other countries, and so we need import permits due to the nature of our work. I remembered offhand that we had a permit coming up later this month and mentioned it to my co-worker, "Sally", so she checked and found out that our permit to import certain products would have to be renewed by the end of the month.
The responsibility to ensure permits are up-to-date is joint between us, with Sally being the main person and I'm the backup if she happens to be out of town, so Sally immediately set about preparing the next permit. She mentioned something about our company name change so I looked on the network at a scanned copy of a permit for a different product we import that was labelled as having the new company name on it so we could check to see how we'd formatted it in the past. While doing so, I noticed that this permit was also nearing its expiry date and that it would expire the first week of February. I mentioned this to Sally and she told me that no, it was expiring in April. I said okay, and mentioned that one of us should update the copy on the network, in that case (since the one I was looking at was obviously obsolete if the expiry date was in April - the expiry date on the copy was clearly for Feb. 07).
Sally immediately got all huffy (as she is wont to do at the drop of a hat, if it's Monday, if I sneeze, if my hair isn't perfectly curled, if her shoes are too tight... in otherwords, she's miserable 75% of the time...) and implied that I was misreading the one on the network because only the most current permit is scanned there. She added, to end the topic, "I'm right, you're wrong." In a very sharp, condescending tone, I might add - the way she normally speaks to people, in other words.
I let it end at that, resolving to check again for my own peace of mind after she left for the day since our hours are slightly different and there would be big trouble (partly on my head) if one of our permits lapsed. Imagine my surprise, five minutes later, when Sally suddenly announced, "Oh, the permit with April expiry is for (other location)! Somehow the post-it note ended up on the wrong one!"
I think that's the closest I'm ever going to get to an apology! (Actually, that's the closest I've ever gotten to an apology from her...)
The strange thing is, she's actually quite a nice, friendly person outside of work. It's only at work that she morphs into Ms. Hyde.
