If Strangulation Was Legal

The Most Boring Woman in the World stopped me today as I ran to my old office to pick up some files I’d left behind during my office move, upstairs. She cornered me by the drinking fountain where there is no escape route, unless you count drowning slowly.

“So…” she said, a diatribe beginning to hang ominously in the air over her head like a think balloon, “That big dumpster outside your office…”

“My old office.” I corrected her, subtly reminding her I no longer work on her floor or her accounts therefore she has no reason to acknowledge my existence ever again.

“That dumpster shouldn’t really be left there because it’s large and will get in the way.” TMBWITW kindly pointed out.

I should note she works on the opposite side of the floor and has no reason to come in contact with my dumpster whatsoever. My "dumpster" is a large cardboard box with wheels.

“It could slip out from the wall and into the corridor and someone could walk into it and bump a shin. And well, I just thought you should be aware.”

It's funny because last time I looked there were no blind people feeling their way along the corridor walls, haphazardly amputating appendages on stray boxes, but I suppose if one was sufficiently incapacitated by say...severe intoxication or sudden loss of limb control, one could conceivably graze the edge of the cardboard container and get a light bruise. They’d have to be pretty toasted though. I mean the corridor has LIGHTS and everything.

“It has to be there till Friday, so everyone else can purge all their old files we no longer need.” I told her. "And there is still a good six foot passage at the side of it. You'd have to eat a LOT of Baby Ruth bars to have a problem passing that without injury!"

She made a disapproving noise. “We really need to be careful not to breach Health & Safety regulations. Plus [name of our Company President] might see it and be annoyed.”

“I don’t see why.” I replied. “He’s the reason we’re all moving in the first place - to make room for his people. He already commented favorably about my cunning recycling of all the paper stuff.”

This flummoxed her for a moment but she wasn’t done quite yet. She leaned in a little and whispered.

“Now HE’S here…” she said, nodding towards the President's office, "Having obstructions around might lower the tone of the floor.”

“This floor?” I asked, so incredulous that my voice hit an octave even Mariah Carey can only dream of. “This floor with the plain gray vinyl, sandpapery, 1970s' wallpaper that’s faded in places where they took down pictures to clean them and never put them back up again, leaving their outline forever faded into the grain? Wallpaper that looks like it was probably developed by NASA as an alternative to the heat shield tiles on the Space Shuttle? This floor with the geometric carpet you could take an acid trip on? This floor right here that everyone else refers to as ‘the Dungeon of Doom’ because it's dark, uninviting and gives people nightmares? Do you think so?”

"It's not that bad!" she said, a touch defensively.

"But...that wallpaper!" I whined. "Get a balloon, rub it on your bosoms and I guarantee you it will stick to that wall like it was superglued there. If it doesn't burst into flames from the static first."

"I...don't know what you are insinuating." she said blankly.

TMBWITW has been with the company for 20 plus years, long enough to see off two husbands and several diseases (including one of the mouth - the woman never shuts up) but I don't think she's ever once had some strange foreigner suggest she rub a balloon on her boobies and stick it to a wall. Which turned out to be a good route to take because she had nothing much to say to that and shuffled off to bore someone else.

Some people just don't appreciate knowing me.