fairytales and frappuccions

Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-do
I have another puzzle for you
Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-da-dee
If you are wise, you’ll listen to me”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Every organisation has its own Machiavelli; an individual distinguished by their plastic charm and sycophantic gestures deployed in copious quantities to reach their career peak at middle management level. Whilst I am not suggesting all middle management has resorted to such dirty politics, nonetheless, there does exist enough of these individuals for almost everyone to know of one. 

The Omoopa Loompa is one such person whom I have had the misfortune of knowing. This 4’9 blonde, imp-like creature is almost 40, although she goes to great lengths to depict herself to the world as a vulnerable 8 year old blossomed from the bud of the last blue-bell in the middle of winter. Her strenuous efforts to remain in her childlike shell range from wearing plastic hearts in her hair, to starving herself systematically for the past three decades in order to ensure her hips resemble that of a pre-teen androgynous child. Such actions cumulatively create an air of fragility about her which effectively deters anybody from legitimately questioning her work in the fear that she may have a full blown public breakdown Hilary Clinton-style. It also helps that while she is on an eternal diet; she brings chocolates and tubs of M&S mini-bites for her co-workers in order to sugar coat her own incompetencies. 

Whilst her china-doll-wrapped-in-cotton-wool persona coupled with her ability to bawl out in tears at any given moment elicits a certain amount of sympathy, any inkling of likeability is soon reversed when you really look into the blackness of her heart.

Her back stabbing inclinations are so sly and unpredictable one is tempted to take tips from Harriet Harman’s stylist and kit out in a stab-proof vest on all work days.  For example, the Oompa Loompas’ advisory colleague who holds post in a lateral position complementing the Oompa Loompas’ own role (and therefore her potentional rival in her warped mind) had been absent from work for a while due to health complications. The Oompa Loompa text her colleague everyday to ask after her wellbeing, sent flowers and a get well card signed off with “XX”, and then quickly followed this up by hacking into her emails and forwarding the particularly controversial ones to eyes they were never meant for, forever ruining the professional integrity of her colleague. Another time when an young student joined the office and began to attract the attentions of some of the male staff, the Oompa Loompa made sure she was well introduced by oozing compliments about the students’ “beautiful hair and such pretty eyes” before deliberately-by-mistake-oh-so-innocently spilling coffee on the designer shirt dress the girl wore. This incident just happened to occur before a departmental meeting, and the girl had to sit there in front of a number of staff with a brown wet stain on her chest thereby being portrayed as clumsy and unprofessional klutz. Of course, reciting these occurrences leaves out the everyday snide remarks and patronising back handed compliments (“I’d love to be able to stretch a size 12 skirt like that-your curves are really something!”) 

If Mugabe had appointed her minister he would’ve won by a land slide. She would advise him to dress him up in a pink smock and sent him out with a fluffy chihuahua to meet the voters of the opposition in order to kiss their babies and offer them candy floss before ordering a mass cull by his goons in the military. “Ah well, at least they would’ve died on a sugar high,” she would reason. And should the international community have the audacity to condemn this, Mugabe would be advised to stamp his foot and throw a tantrum and snivel as he recalled in a coochie-coo voice the trauma of how that “howwibble, mean man” Ban Ki Moon spoke to him in a raised voice. If that doesn’t get him off the hook, the African dictator should promptly follow it up with a threat to slash his own wrists.

It really does take remarkable will power to restrain oneself from unleashing a triad of abuse at this woman. If it wasn’t for her permanent aura of immaturity and feigned vulnerability one would point out the unhealthy pettiness of her office politics. But then again, nobody wants to be responsible for Thumbelinas’ suicide attempt.