Clarice Taylor, famously known as Anna Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” and Birdie in Play Misty for Me, will always be most memorable for me as Grady’s goldbrick cousin Emma from “Sanford and Son”. Here at work, we’ve got our own goldbrick; the director of customer service at one of our facilities.

In a way, she’s very much like Micro-Manager but much lazier and not as loud. She audibly proclaims herself as “the only Jew in the company”, often reinforcing her heritage constantly by sprinkling Yiddish in her everyday speech. And of course, she manages to keep everyone on their toes not only by always taking off for some random non-Jewish holiday (honestly, I think she invents them at her whim), but by always falling asleep.

You see…Cousin Emma is a narcoleptic.

In meetings, she’s always a joy to watch. Her eyes start to close slowly, then she bobs her head slowly down to her chest. As soon as there’s some loud noise, like laughter or applause, she’ll wake up and start laughing or clapping. One time, she was in the middle of taking notes and fell asleep…then woke up and kept on writing like nothing happened. People in meetings have started to do this now to fuck with her, but she’s insulated by so many levels of bureaucracy that she’ll never have to suffer for it in terms of a reduction of pay or reprimand from a higher-up.

Another thing about Cousin Emma is that she’s a blatant bigot. Where Micro-Manager would be more subtle with her words, Cousin Emma drops H-bomb sized politically incorrect statements, then blankets them with “But I’m Jewish, so it’s OK.” Luckily, I haven’t had many interactions with her ass, but she’s gotten into it with more than a couple of people, most notably, D.A.W.G. who she refers to with other co-workers as “a white-trash redneck” because she graduated from the University of Georgia.

She has four subordinates in her office: a lesbian, a Filipino woman, a Black single mother and the cursed one. The cursed one is a position that no one has held for any longer than six months in the past 10 years. That’s some pretty serious fucking turnover! Since I’ve been here, there have been four people in that position, including a gay Spanish guy who she fired in less than two weeks for…well…let’s just say if it made Southern Voice, her ass would’ve been out of a job because there was some definite discrimination.

Then again, he did hit on anything with a twig and two berries, including a very married (and very heterosexual) police lieutenant.

Sadly, she’s one of those people in upper management who you know worked their connections just to get where they are. She calls her employees racial slurs, can’t manage tasks to any degree of success, and can fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

Actually, that last skill might be marketable somewhere.