COWORKERS CAUSE JEALOUSY TO REAR ITS UGLY HEAR

He calls her "Courtney." I call her trouble waiting to happen.

The Other Half and I made a pact before we married three years ago.

We'd be trusting of each other. We'd have friends of the opposite sex without becoming suspicious of each other. We'd talk openly and honestly about our feelings toward others and work them out together.

Oh, what fools we were.

All that works fine, as long as our friends of the opposite sex aren't too attractive, are part of successful marriages or have some sort of disgusting personal habit like using their car keys to remove ear wax.

But lately, we've developed friends of a different kind.

Take Courtney the Intern. She's tall. She's thin. She's blonde. She has an interest in Mr. Half's career and looks to him for guidance. She makes Mr. Half feel strong, handsome and intelligent and never yells, "Geez! Would it absolutely kill you to dump this cat litter for once in your life?!?!"

So when summer ended and it came time for little Courtney to head back to college, Mr. Half took on the task of finding her the perfect going-away gift and presenting it on behalf of the company. He decided a mixed bag of items representing our community and the company where we work would be perfect.

The Great Gift Search of 1998 started with him desperately tossing around pages of the Sunday paper.

"Did you take the Blimpie's coupons?" he asked. "Because Courtney really likes Blimpie's, and I thought it'd be funny to put those in there."

That was fine. What's a submarine sandwich shop coupon between friends, I reasoned. But it didn't end there. Over the next three days, I was asked where would be the best place to find alien memorabilia "because of all the UFO sightings around here," a cute coffee mug "because she drank so much coffee working the late shift" and pencils with the name of our local soccer team "because she really LOVED those soccer games."

It came to a head when we were shopping for assorted birthday cards. Mr. Half picked up a little trinket. "Think Courtney would like this?" he asked.

I lost it.

"You've spent more time on this girl's going-away present than you have on my last three Christmas gifts! You probably couldn't even tell me what you bought me last Christmas!" I shouted. Shoppers nearby scuttled away nervously.

"Yes I could," Mr. Half said. "It was a necklace."

It was a cartoon-a-day Dilbert desk calendar.

Courtney left not a moment too soon. But my revenge is just starting.

My company just hired a 25-year-old hunk named Bob. Our cubicles connect, we share a filing cabinet and we've been assigned to work "closely" on various projects.

Apparently, that entails quite a few working lunches. And Mr. Half isn't too happy about it.

"I don't know why everybody is making such a big deal over that guy," he said. Ah, the first signs of jealousy. Just wait until Bob's birthday rolls around and I decide to get him a little something.

Of course, Bob has no great yearning to begin passionate affairs with fat Amazon women. In fact, he prefers the brainless-yet-slutty types.

But Mr. Half doesn't know that.

~Heidi Nieland is a former staff writer for the Southeast Missourian who now lives in Pensacola, Fla.