A workplace love triangle is one of the most painful romantic situations a person can get caught up in, and we can scarcely imagine a more tragic one than the disastrous affair taking place in an office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania right now: This woman is in love with her boss, and her boss is in love with a puppet he saw in a musical.
Wow. It really doesn’t get much worse than that!
Olivia Mattheson, a receptionist at Philadelphia marketing firm Pierson Associates, has spent the past six months pining for her older boss, Head of Branding Leon Grant—but no matter how much time she spends organizing his emails exactly to his liking and planning her day around running into him in the elevator, the power of her love cannot overcome the fact that Leon is desperately obsessed with Mitzi, a multicolored puppet he saw in a touring production of an off-Broadway musical called “Puppet University.” Truly, the situation is a tragic no matter what angle you view it from: it’s painful to watch Olivia sit at her desk, surreptitiously scrolling through Leon’s Instagram account to look for evidence of a girlfriend, and just as painful to note that as she does so, Leon sits in his office with the blinds down, repeatedly watching a YouTube sizzle reel of the musical in which Mitzi, who is puppeted by a middle-aged woman clad in black jeans and a black turtleneck, can be heard singing a doo-wop-style song about how Puppet University lacks funding for her arts club. Olivia has been trying desperately to impress Leon with her sleek business-casual skirt sets and subtle references to her enjoyment of classy Philly restaurants, having no idea that he is enamored with just the opposite type of woman—a loudmouthed puppet with hair made of purple yarn, who can be seen violently humping Puppet University’s athletic director character during the homecoming football game song in the play’s second act.
God, this is hard to watch.
Just last week, Leon asked Olivia what she thought of age-gap relationships, which she believed to be a clear come-on, as he is ten years her senior—but when she used his computer to help him resize a PDF later that day, she was crestfallen to see the recent Google search “how old is mitzi the puppet,” followed by “regular man and puppet happy together?” and “dating puppet effect on corporate career.” She tried to put the searches out of her head as she returned to her desk, and was again excited when he came over to lean down to her and ask her if she knew anywhere good to eat around the Orpheum Theater, but sadly, he immediately followed up the question by asking her to book a single front row ticket for twelve consecutive nights of Puppet University’s run. Olivia must be catching on to Leon’s interest in another woman-slash-puppet, especially after he accidentally called her Mitzi when she wore a brightly colored, puppet-like top just yesterday, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It’s clear from the way she looks at him that Olivia has imagined her and Leon’s entire life together, and it’s clear from the way he opens the Puppet University playbill to gaze at the glossy photo of Mitzi wearing a giant church hat and belting into a handheld mic that Leon has a different, also highly unlikely future planned.
At the end of the day, this is just one of the saddest love triangles imaginable. There’s almost no chance anyone ends up happy. We’d cross our fingers, but it seems pretty bleak. Here’s hoping that Olivia, Leon, and even the woman who plays Mitzi all find some peace.
