The art director I am paired with most often is unraveling. Her husband is having a prolonged and dramatic midlife crisis, she's allowing him to tap dance on her, and it's interfering with her work.
This has been going on for months now. She can't focus. I have to continually remind her of what is due and when. I also have to remind her that if she does indeed find herself a woman alone, she will need this job more than ever. Before she can get down to work, we have to discuss it all ad nauseum. She leaves work early to go to therapy. Worst of all, she cries all the time.
This is the part I find the most embarrassing. I do not cry in public. I do not understand people who do. I simply cannot abide the messy vulnerability and don't feel it belongs in the office. Every time this AD and I have an episode, I either call my best friend or email my oldest friend. This soap opera has been going on so long, and it's taken so many twists and turns, that her life has become material for my monologues.
Which, I find, makes me a hideous bitch. For the art director got me a very thoughtful birthday gift* and a card that practically canonizes me. She says I'm a "loving, beautiful friend" and she appreciates my support. Ouch.
So tomorrow I shall try to be more patient with her. I can't let my work suffer because of her problems, but there has to be a way to balance my responsibility to my client with a little more humanity.
*Frango Mints, which I love but can only be purchased at Macy's, a store I cannot enter for important sociopolitical/religious reasons -- they took over Marshall Field's and they have the nads to use a Lennon/McCartney song on their Christmas commercials.
http://onegalsmusings.blogspot.com/2006/10/no-more-tears.html
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