A Mother’s Day Surprise

I spoke to my mother today, of course to wish her a happy mother’s day. She just returned yesterday from vacation and spent the better part of today at work. What a nut. While she was at work, she realized something very shocking, and it’s so bizarre and insane and scary that I had to share.

Several years ago my mother described to me a very weird episode involving some tea that burned her throat to a crisp. If I recall correctly, she ended up in the emergency room once because the buring was so bad, and she believed she was having a horrible case of heartburn. She only tried the tea once more, and it burned then too. The tea in question is just some everyday tea that she brought to work to drink in the morning, so she didn’t throw it out, but she also didn’t drink it again.

A few weeks later, my mother discovered something on her keyboard began to burn her fingers. Before she realized what was happening, she touched her eyes, and of course her eyes started to burn. The burning was so bad, in fact, that she wasn’t able to open her eyes for about 5 minutes.

Today at the office, my mother discovered some seeds on her desk. At first she thought nothing of it and cleaned up her desk. After working for about ten minutes, she could feel her throat and eyes begin to burn. One of the managers happened to be in the office, so my mother showed her the seeds. The manager, Judy, took one seed and tasted it, at which point she started screaming. The seeds, it turns out, are jalepeno pepper seeds.

My mother then begins to put two and two together and quickly realizes that a coworker has been spreading the juice and seeds on her keyboard, in her mug, on her mouse . . . for more than five years now. I know this sounds like a nutty story–my mother can hardly believe it herself–but my mother has had numerous confrontations and arguments with this coworker, Barb, who has over the years proved herself to be very vindictive. Barb is also the only other employee who has been with the firm since 2000, when these weird episodes began happening. And they don’t just include her spreading jalpeno peppers all over my mother’s desk. They also include scratching my mother’s car with a knife, popping her tires, stealing her fan, and stealing her pay stubs. Thankfully, Barb hasn’t tried to poison my mother, and, no, my mother can’t prove Barb did all this, but she’s known Barb for nearly 20 years, and the shoe fits, as the saying goes. Fortunately, my mother’s manager resolved to immediately install a few video cameras in the office.

What madness.


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