Crazy Hypochondriac Co-worker is calling her normal kid "Special Needs"

A co-worker that is prone to drama and hypochondria has taken to calling her beautiful, normal, one year old little girl a "special needs" child. Why you may ask? Because she has had a lot of respiratory infections this winter and actually had to have her adenoids removed. I've read up on this the adenoid removal isn't really a serious surgery and plenty of kids have to have it - and well prone to colds and bronchitis? It seems like this too is fairly common it certainly mirrors how I grew up (croup and chronic bronchitis were part of my life) and I was never labeled as "special needs".

I just hate to hear that term thrown around so lightly in an attempt to garner sympathy for her pathetic mother. To me the term "special needs" kids should be saved for kids with a physical or mental handicap that truly do have special needs and require extraordinary care or assistance.

Every kid gets bad colds, lots of kids have bronchitis, lots have their adenoids out.

This woman is a single mom - tried to trick her ex-boyfriend into marrying her by getting pregnant and he wouldn't be sucked into her drama again. He is out of the picture completely - pays his child support and that is all. He didn't want another child, told her so and refused to be trapped. She went ahead and had this baby on her own and now has used and abused the leniency our office has to the point that much of that is being taken away from all of us and it can be traced to her abuse of the system.

Here are somethings she has done:

• "Worked from home one day a week" to save on childcare - anyone who has ever spent any amount of time with a baby knows she wasn't working on anything work related those days - she checked email and that is that.
• Her hours are 8-5 and she often comes in at 9 and leaves at 4:30 but still takes an hour lunch each day.
• Managed to get the lightest account load of anyone and still whine and complain about being overworked YET has time to make the rounds and go chit chat with everyone for hours of the day.
• Somehow talked her boss into giving her a raise because she needed it for the baby (her story).
• She called in to "work from home" a few weeks ago because it snowed - I live 50 miles away and I made it in ON TIME, she lives 7 miles away and was afraid to drive (call a taxi then).

Add to all this that the girl is just crazy as a loon, batshit crazy, marches to the beat of the music in her own little brain, etc. and that poor baby is going to grow up thinking she's constantly dying of some horrible malady that makes her special needs.

And good news for her the new crazy spending bill that was passed through Congress will open things up for her to get public assistance when she gets fired for her crazy abuse of the system here, so she'll be able to milk the system for everything she can get for her special needs baby.

I know the dad too used to work with him - I wish I knew him well enough to tell him that he should step in now before his daughter's life is ruined beyond repair by her crazy mother. He wouldn't but he should.