You ever met someone so petty, so obsessed with the tiniest details, that it feels like they just want to be miserable?
That was Paula.
When I took a part-time office job back in the late ’90s, I thought Paula was just another well-meaning, slightly overzealous office manager.
I was wrong.
It didn’t take long to realize that beneath her polite smile lurked a queen of passive-aggression.
Working under her was like trying to navigate a minefield made of printer paper and sarcastic emails.
It was exhausting.
As soon as I found another place I was outta there… but I realized that the universe has a way of evening the score.
And it apparently had a doozy lined up for Paula.
A payback she would never forget.
Paper Cuts and Passive Aggression
At first, Paula’s quirks were almost funny.
She treated office supplies like sacred relics and acted as if she alone held the keys to productivity.
If your stapling was off by even a fraction of an inch, you were guaranteed a pointed remark. “Interesting technique,” she’d say, raising an eyebrow, “but not exactly office policy.”
Every minor slip-up—like sending an email without CCing her—was treated like a personal betrayal. It didn’t matter how insignificant the task was; Paula could find a way to make it unbearable.
No one was spared.
I once saw her chew out a coworker for using the wrong shade of highlighter.
When I tried to laugh it off, she gave me that tight-lipped, patronizing smile of hers. “We all have room to grow,” she said, “even when we think we don’t.”
After four months of enduring Paula’s nonsense, I’d had enough.
I handed in my notice and walked out of that place, swearing that Paula was a chapter of my life I’d never revisit.
Exit Stage Left (Or So I Thought)
Years passed, and Paula became little more than a funny story I told over dinner—“Remember that manager obsessed with highlighters?”
Life moved on, and I found a better job where people managed their work without needing a ruler to align their documents.
Paula, as far as I was concerned, was history.
Then one day, I got a call from the Big Boss from that old office.
He had some news that made my week—Paula had been fired.
Apparently, she’d refused to hand over the company’s financial books during an audit. Not just refused—she flat-out told the CEO of their sister firm “No” when he asked to see them.
When the Big Boss himself got involved, Paula stuck to her guns, probably thinking she was untouchable.
But this time, even her years of nitpicking couldn’t save her. They gave her the boot.
And the cherry on top? Paula had filed a wrongful termination lawsuit.
That’s why Big Boss called me—he wanted me to testify about Paula’s behavior back when I worked there.
I didn’t need to think twice. I said yes, imagining the satisfaction of airing Paula’s dirty laundry under oath.
But in the end, I never got the chance. The case must have crumbled because I never heard from their lawyers again.
I figured that was the end of it.
But the universe?
It wasn’t quite finished with Paula yet.
Paula in the Wild
A few years later, a massive storm hit our area—one of those wild summer floods that leave roads underwater and people scrambling to stock up on supplies.
Prices shot up everywhere, and the news started covering cases of price gouging.
One night, while watching the local broadcast, I saw a story about a gas station that had doubled its prices on essentials—fuel, bottled water, batteries, you name it.
Then the screen cut to an interview with the gas station manager.
And there she was—Paula, in all her smug, self-assured glory. I nearly spit out my drink.
Paula wasn’t flustered or nervous—oh no.
She looked exactly the same as she always had: perfectly composed, with that condescending little smirk she wore whenever she was about to explain why everyone else was wrong.
The reporter asked her why the prices had been raised so sharply, and Paula gave a textbook response: “Well, technically, it’s supply and demand. There’s nothing illegal about adjusting prices to match the current situation.”
She spoke slowly as if explaining it to a toddler.
The way she said it, you’d think she was proud of herself like she’d discovered a clever loophole the rest of the world was too dumb to see.
Paula didn’t flounder. She doubled down.
She wasn’t going to admit to anything—even with the cameras rolling.
Classic Paula.
A Perfect Ending
The interview ended, and I was already grinning, thinking how poetic it was that Paula’s tendency to justify bad behavior was now on full display for the whole city. But the real treat came right at the end.
As the reporter signed off, the station ran a caption at the bottom of the screen—Paula’s name and title.
And there it was: “Paulette Hargrove, Station Manager.”
I nearly fell off the couch laughing.
They’d gotten her name wrong. Not just a little wrong—comically wrong.
Instead of “Paula Hargrave,” they’d listed her as “Paulette Hargrove.”
This might seem like a small mistake, but not to Paula.
Back in the office, getting her name right had been her obsession. If you ever dared misspell it—“Hargrave” instead of “Hargrove” or vice versa—she’d make you regret it.
I once saw her berate an intern for five minutes straight over a typo in a memo. “Attention to detail,” she’d hiss, “is everything.”
Now, here she was, reduced to “Paulette Hargrove” on the six o’clock news.
No emails to send. No sticky notes to post.
Just her and that glorious typo immortalized on the evening broadcast for all to see.
I could only imagine the steam pouring out of her ears when she saw it.
Paula, the queen of nitpicking, the arbiter of all things correct, undone by the very thing she prided herself on.
It was the perfect ending.
Paula had spent her whole life pointing out the flaws in others, and now, on her biggest stage, she was the one being reduced to a careless mistake.
As the news switched to the next story, I sat back, still chuckling to myself.
There was something deeply satisfying about knowing that, in the end, Paula hadn’t just met her match—she’d become her own worst enemy.