Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Very Considerable Danger of Going at Work

Wow, look at all this stuff. It has been a long time since I have been down here to the basement. Any readers still subscribed will probably be amazed to see this addition to their feed. The astute reader with a good memory (or one who has read back through all these humiliations just now) will have detected a marked aversion in my psychological makeup for using the restroom at work.

In short, I hate it.

That fear has refused to diminish with time becuase of occassional events like the second post of this blog and increasingly intense experiences such as the one I have just had.

I was sitting on the jakes about to engage in some paperwork (by far the most vulnerable phase of the whole undertaking) when the door booms open, a person is heard to stomp in and then stops - I can only assume- staring at my closed stall door.

"I don't believe it!" he declares.

He stomps back out, sighing dramatically. Then in wide-eyed hesitation and held breath, yet about to relax, I hear him stomp back in. The paper towel dispenser rattles as he replaces the roll. He noisily wipes down the mirror. At this point I am trying to finish the task I had before me in a manner concurrently hectic and discrete.

He goes to replace the TP in the two unoccupied stalls to my left and I hear him mutter, over his breath.

"I'm going to strangle your neck!"

I, of course, sit stunned in mid-swipe. Kind reader, please understand that I loathe using the restroom for the very fear that in my worst moments I may offend someone's delicate sensibilities with an unfortunate sound or inavoidable odor, and suffer the silent comments I imagine their interior monologues make in my judgement. Horror if they should commit to some audible signal of their repulsion, such as an indignant sniff, or an embarrassed cough. A comment from them would be grounds for resignation, change of residency and a new identity in much the same vein as the Witness Protection Agency affords. An irrational part of my mind is convinced that someone will poke their head over the stall wall and say, "oh you do it that way? Nobody but you does it that way!"

It just figures that I, who am already overly concerned with such things according to some, would get the one person who becomes so mad at me for doing what was only excusable to do in that very room that he threatens my life.

A death threat.

As if I was just doing that to spite him. As if I couldn't wait to race him to the bathroom, just so that I could be in that predicament when he came in to clean it.

So he left again and I crept out to wash my hands, tilting my head foward to look over my shoulder, the way that you do. It was quiet. I had no idea if he were waiting just outside the door, clasping his hands in preparation for my neck-strangling. Mentally I went through some of the moves I had learned over a year ago in HapKiDo. The door creaked open and I poked my head out, swivelling it from side to side like a bunny that has heard a hawk.

He was gone.

Later in the day I saw him in a hallway, just looking like a normal janitor (if it's the guy I think it was. Remember- I did not attempt to look out through the crack in the stall door for fear that his face would be RIGHT THERE like in some Twilight zone.)

I found that I was unable to stop staring at him as I walked by.

I'll probably dream of him tonight.

I'll try never to go at work again. . .I will hang onto it until I go toxic.