Maneater

Chapter 3 of a longer story about being watched in the modern workplace

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My first impression of Kate Stamper was that she was a maneater—the kind in the old Hall and Oates song. “Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up.” It turned out I was wrong about the “man” part—it wasn’t a man she was after. But the “eater” part—oh boy, Stamper was voracious. She wanted to devour the world, and the men she worked with … well, they were just a palate cleanser, an amuse bouche at the start of a very big meal. 

When I first met her, she was bearing down on a co-worker of ours named Jeremy with a fierce intensity that looked and felt like hunger. Jeremy was handsome, athletic, and cocky enough to think that he deserved the attention—but he was also happily married and many years older than Stamper. I was new to the company we worked at, and I watched their interaction with an odd fascination: Were all the relationships here so intense? 

The kind of attention Stamper directed at Jeremy was not merely the attention one offered to a friend, an office mate with whom you shared opinions and felt connected to. It had this edge of obsession, even possession. For a time, she wanted Jeremy, or wanted something from him, it was hard to tell which. She sat next to him at lunch, sat too close, and when the conversation touched on a new topic, she’d turn to Jeremy and ask, “What do you think Jeremy?”, as if neither she nor anyone else at the table could continue until we heard from him. She’d look right at him, right into his eyes, from up close. When he looked back, he looked just a little scared and confused. He was a proud buck pinned helpless in the headlights of her attention.

Photo: WorldDeer.org

This all happened at the lunch table, which for this short, sweet time at Wizards of WBT came to symbolize all that was good about working at the company. (Later, after the bananas and the surveillance camera, and then after the clowns came, the lunch table just felt a little tragic. But that’s a story for another time.)

One time, people at the lunch table got to talking about hands, and Stamper said, “Let me see your hands Jeremy,” and when he held them out, she took his hands in hers, turned them over, squeezing them with the unabashed privilege of a lover. “You have really strong hands,” she said, though to me hers looked stronger. 

Stamper didn’t just say such things, she loaded them up with the power of her appetite. If I said she “cooed” or “purred,” it would imply a sexual interest; if I said she “growled” them, it would imply anger or dominance. There was an edge to it—all of the men who became targets of Stamper’s interest, me included, felt that–but it wasn’t sexual. In a way it felt menacing to have that intense yearning directed at you, as if you had suddenly grabbed the attention of the schoolyard bully.

And yet it was also kind of intoxicating. Stamper was smart as a whip, confident, assertive. She was afraid of nothing, would try anything. And she was a physical specimen: as strong and physically bold as any woman—hell, pound-for-pound any person—I’ve ever met. In the rare instances where work life called for “feats of strength”—I’m thinking of hitting a punching bag at a company visit to a fun park, or go-karting, stuff like that—she was rabid about competing and she often won. If you bested her, you can bet that got her attention. What she brought was intensity, drive, and a desire to win, all focused right on you.

Jeremy was the object of her hunger for weeks–but after a time, you could see that hunger wane. She grew disappointed with his answers to her questions; she grew bored with the topics he raised. You could see her realizing that he was not what she was after.

And then she dropped him. One day she was joining him as he walked in the office door, sidling up to him as he got his coffee. The next day she ignored him, treating him like any other co-worker, his presence and activity of no interest. He looked both lost and relieved as he disappeared into the dark.

The laser beam, Sauron’s eye, had shifted to Christopher.

Christopher was a 24-year-old kid who had blown into Seattle from Port Arthur, Texas, because Seattle didn’t look like home and home, after all, was all “refineries and oil and bullshit,” as he liked to say.  He somehow ended up interviewing at Wizards and someone, I think it was Jeremy, had the good sense to recognize this ineffable quality he had and hired him on the spot.

Christopher shone like a lightbulb in a dim room: he was the most curious guy I’ve ever met, curious about everything, and he had an opinion on everything too, one he was happy to share with you as if it was god’s truth. That would have been annoying, except that he was just as happy to change if you proved him wrong. He engaged with everybody, was liked by everybody (at least at first), and showed a knack for solving problems that accelerated him through the company ranks. He seemed like a rising star, and in some ways he still does—unless his paranoia slows him down.

Stamper took to him like a dog to a bone. She dug into him, pounding him with questions and attention, and he turned it all right back, for he was as quick and witty and voracious as her in his own fun-loving way. It was amusing to watch but scary too, for Christopher was so young, and I could see that he was energized but also a little exhausted by Stamper’s attention. Because he was single and unattached, they could openly say and do the kinds of things that Jeremy (to his credit) would never do: she called him her “work hubby,” and they regularly joked about their bond. She’d leave little sticky notes on his desk, jokes intimating something more. She got closer to him—physically closer—too: she’d lock arms with him as they walked down the hall, put her arm around his shoulders at the lunch table. It sometimes got a bit uncomfortable to watch, and Jeremy and I and some of the other “mature” guys in the office wondered if Christopher had gotten in over his head.

But Christopher was unfazed by it all. He laughed through the intensity and showed no discomfort at sitting in the odd spotlight of her attention. To his great credit, he also laughed it off when one day the spotlight shifted and she turned away … to me.

I had been there maybe a year when my turn came. I knew Stamper a little bit before it was my turn, enough to say hello, but we had never worked together—I was always on one set of projects, she on another. To me, she was always the intense girl who was bearing down like a freight train on one guy after another. It never occurred to me that she’d bear down on me … until she did.

One day at the lunch table, Stamper sat next to me and suddenly started peppering me with questions—it doesn’t matter what they were—and then she listened intently, avidly. When I got up to go on a walk, she joined me. And then, for several weeks, I felt the full heat of her attention. When she had a question, she came to me. When I was ready for a cup of coffee, so was she. If someone told a joke, she looked to see if I laughed. She asked about my education, my hiking, my car. When we talked, she held my gaze, looked directly into my eyes. I felt like the most fascinating creature on earth.

But I was also confused. Didn’t she know I was happily married? Didn’t she know I was 20 years her senior, that she was closer in age to my son than to me? I made no secret of either.

I sensed the crackle of energy in our interactions—but it didn’t feel sexual. It felt good, exciting, to have this young, smart, fit woman so (seemingly) engaged with me, but what did it mean? Was she looking for something more? I couldn’t tell. Was I? The best answer to all of this was no, nothing, stay away—so I went with that.

If you thought that Stamper eventually gave everyone a try, you’d be wrong. She wanted nothing to do with Don Walker: Don of the furtive, shifting gaze; Don who intimated that he knew important things, dark things, and then clammed up; Don who couldn’t stand to lose a game at the company picnic, and so cheated; Don who was caught fabricating his exercise record so that he had the top numbers in the company during an “exercise challenge,” even though everybody knew that nobody could beat Stamper. Yeah, Don was a weird one, and Stamper wanted nothing to do with him. But then, no one did.

But this doesn’t end where you think it does, with Stamper finding a man who matched her intensity. No, it was more interesting than that, at least for me. You see, Stamper had joined me on a work project that had huge potential, and once she saw that–saw something bigger into which she could pour her energy–it’s as if she just instantly knew that no single person could ever satisfy her vast appetite. It would take something bigger, and for a time I got to ride alongside her as she poured her energy into something more worthy of her energy and intelligence. It was that project, and where it took her, that made me so curious to hear what she thought. 

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I’ve made up the story and the characters in it. While certain businesses, places, and events are used to orient the reader in the real world, the characters and actions described are wholly imaginary and any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.