I’m willing to bet that anyone reading this right now who has a regular place of business or study also happens to have a Work Nemesis. Much like the Work Crush (someone who is rarely worth a second look in real life yet from the smaller sample of colleagues is the hottest and therefore merits sexual attraction within that particular environment), there is always one person that drives you so crazy that you’re not even sure how they’ve lived their lives so far without getting eaten by a pack of rabid, robotic lions from Columbia who also happen to be drug lords. THAT’S how much you hate this person.

But when you think about what really irks you about them, your borderline obsessive hatred is hardly justified when you look at the annoyances individually. You can’t hate someone solely based on the fact that they talk to you too early in the morning, or because they always take the last of the coffee without setting another pot. Their actions hardly deserve more than an eyeroll let alone the list of ways you think they should die or at least be disfigured in horrible freak accidents involving clown cars and tapioca pudding.

So maybe you make a point to change your ways. Maybe you get up in the morning and say, ‘today’s the day I’m going to chill the fuck out.’ But without fail, by lunchtime you’re back on the Internet googling killer bee farmers…you know…just for research purposes.

Well I’m here to tell you that it’s not worth fighting your feelings. No matter what, you are ALWAYS going to irrationally hate someone you work with. If your nemesis were to quit tomorrow, you’d hate someone else by 10 am. Why? Because you have to. It’s how The Universe keeps us all from being good people. Even if you worked at an office with a bunch of clones of the most average guy you’ve ever encountered and they all looked and behaved the exact same way, you would still want to kill one of them and have raunchy secret sex with another. It’s just the way things have to be.

Right now I work from home. I’m by myself all day long and even I have found my work nemesis: The Kettle. (Yup. I JUST reached the purpose of this entire post. Embrace it.)

For years, the newf and I had a plug-in kettle that could boil the entire contents of the Atlantic if we wanted it to. It was the best kettle ever. I’d be all, ‘I want tea!‘ and the kettle would freak the fuck out like, ‘YOU THINK I CAN’T BOIL WATER, MOTHERFUCKER? SHABLAM! ORANGE PEKOE ALL UP IN YOUR BUSINESS, BITCH!‘ And then it would get so hot that our cupboards would start warping.

The problem? It didn’t have an automatic shut-off. It was like the crack addict of boiling – it just never knew when enough was enough. Because the new theme of my life is Scattered, I would put the kettle on, forget, hop in the shower, and rush out to find it boiled itself dry which is apparently dangerous or something. So on a very sad day, we replaced it and my entire life went to hell.

The new kettle looks like pure hotness. It’s stainless steel, it sits on a black base, and it pretty much hits on you when you walk by. But that’s about where it gives up. Even with the bare minimum amount of water in it, it takes over 45 minutes to boil, or, long enough for me to forget I even wanted tea in the first place. Plus its ‘I’m ready‘ noise was modeled after the sound a fragile Japanese butterfly makes whilst softly flitting about a field of pansies. Even when it does boil, I never hear it, instead remembering two hours later by the time the water is cold again.

Bottom line: I could heat water faster with a teaspoon and candle.

And this cycle happens every day making me full-on ragey by the time the newf comes home and there’s really no easy way to explain that you’re in a fight with an inanimate kitchen appliance that has deprived you of tea for yet another day. But yet we’ll probably never return it because I’m lazy and the newf actually DOES have enough braincells to focus on his want for tea long enough to keep tabs on the water situation whereas I’m too busy fighting 74837272 other impulses including but not limited to:

– Maybe eventually I’ll convince myself that a cup of tea is as good as a latté.
– I wonder what Jake Gylenhaal is doing right now.
– Betcha whatever it is, it’s sexy.
– Ooh let’s have a pants off dance off!
– I wonder if my neighbours just saw that.
– Oh look! I have puppies!
– Betcha I can still get work done while watching this Kardashians marathon…

And then I come to about four days later not really knowing where I am and also thinking that the junk in my trunk is entirely inadequate which is somehow still the kettle’s fault.

Posts that you write during hour ten of air travel don’t need to really have any structure or purpose, right? Believe it or not, I was very tired when this post came together. Be kind.