A Mexican Standoff of Epic Proportions

Maybe you’ve noticed I avoid discussing work these days. I know I’m flattering myself but it’s because I’m afraid that should my real name ever get out, I’ll get fired for online snarkiness and since I have no marketable skills, I will remained unemployed for many moon while my savings wither away. But the following story? This I must share with you.

To preface this, I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ve had about six hours of sleep in the past two days. Partially because I’ve been busy and partially because that busyness is exhausting me and when I’m exhausted, I don’t sleep well. It’s a vicious cycle that usually ends in my narcotic of choice, Advil PM. I haven’t gotten there yet since it’s only been two nights of insomnia. I’m still firmly planted in the phase that oscillates between crankiness and glazed-over, vacant staring.

So, when I entered the ladies room earlier today and saw that my favorite stall was occupied, I got a little ornery. I was forced to take the handicapped stall at the end to provide a buffer. Hate that stall. My feet swing because my legs are short. Grumble grumble.

Normally I would just wiz and leave but because I’m a LITTLE ON EDGE RIGHT NOW I SO CAN I PLEASE JUST HAVE SOME FUCKING PRIVACY WHILE I URINATE, I waited. Seconds crept by. The other occupant shuffled and fidgeted a bit. She pulled some paper from the roll and deafeningly wadded it into a ball. I tapped my foot. She made a second toilet paper wad. I sighed. By then I had passed the Awkwardness Barrier which requires that you perform within 20 seconds of seating yourself in a public bathroom when only one other stranger is present. Whether those 20 seconds pass due to stage fright or choice, after that time period it is absolutely prohibited to do your business until the other occupant has vacated. Why is this a rule? I don’t know. Maybe this is how my OCD brain keeps me from tapping things as I walk by them like my father does. Maybe I just can’t stand the sound of pure silence unexpectedly interrupted by the piercing cry of pee on water. Regardless, after this period of time, you enter into a Mexican Stand Off with your opponent. Only one can remain and I was prepared to wait another half an hour or so to prove my point.

I was pulled from my dazed reverie by a cough. With a heavy heart, I recognized it. It was a particular coworker of mine who consistently makes my eye tick. She’s foreign. Even her cough has a thick accent. She’s also the office talker: get caught at the sink with her and you will need to discuss for 15 minutes how you are both in the restroom at the same time and isn’t that SUCH a coincidence. Any slim consideration of getting on with my business vanished. She was going to fucking leave and I was going to get my fucking privacy and oh my god, I think I just burst a blood vessel in my eye.

Please allow me to expand on my vehemence. Office B and I have nicknamed this woman “Happy F” because after her first week here she wished us all a very happy Friday. Each one of us. Individually. And then next week it was “Happy Monday!” and “Happy Tuesday!” etc. etc. until my nails were digging into my palms to keep me from flying at her in a fit of desperate rage. You want more? She has taken it upon herself to be our personal welcome wagon and hug new employees on their first day. HUG. As in full body contact. She asks a series of questions that would be better directed at Google to anyone who demonstrates the slightest shred of competence in a topic. I despise watering the plant next to her desk because inevitably, she prairie dogs out of her cubicle and starts asking me about sun exposure, speckles on foliage, and botanical terminology and I have to stand there and not say, “I’m just watering the fucking plant” which takes immense restraint on my part. She makes me order random office supplies. In one instance, she decided she didn’t like the footstool I got her (footstool – who needs a footstool?!) , she hid it in the storage closet and buried it under other things as if I eventually wouldn’t think, “hmm, I don’t remember leaving all of these previously neatly stacked items in one heap on the floor.” She once told people gathered around the coffee machine that she heard on NPR that laughing has health benefits so if you live alone, they recommend practicing on inanimate objects. Like tea cups. Then she demonstrated. Now I can’t erase the depressing mental image of her standing alone in a tattered bathrobe giggling at her morning cup of tea in an otherwise deserted studio apartment.

So, that’s Happy F. Imagine my relief when she gave up and flushed. Another minute or two and I would be clear to evacuate the three cups of coffee that were keeping my sleep deprived brain semi-useful. She washed her hands. I stared at my boots and imagined that I was somewhere else. Then I heard the sound that will echo through future nightmares. The unmistakable zing of a make-up bag zipper sliding open.

For the next eternity, I sat in silence as she brushed her teeth, rinsed, brushed a few spots she had missed, and rinsed again. I sighed loudly. She flossed. I counted ceiling tiles. She gargled with mouth wash, and rinsed. In a dramatic gesture, I rested my forehead on my right arm which I had stretched out along the metal support bar on the wall. She patted her hands with a paper towel, brushed her hair, wiped down the counter, adjusted her clothing and took a long hard look at herself in the mirror. By the end, I had resigned myself to die alone in the handicapped stall and was preparing to scrawl my last will and testament across the wall. I leave my DVDs to Lulu, the condo to Beau, my collection of strangers’ grocery lists to Bologna. But to Happy F, I leave NOTHING.

My head jerked up when the door swung open and another woman entered. I had dozed off somewhere near the end of Happy F’s grooming session and didn’t notice when she left. I finished my business and returned to my desk, having proven my point by spending my entire lunch break in the restroom.