squamous | is my clownish quest a source of amusement to you?

and now, a little story (sad, true)

by: Chris

This morning I found myself motivated to do a quick clean up of the rooms at our office that the TC folks had vacated. There was various garbage laying around after their move out. A neighbor of ours had paid them a small amount of money for the right to come in and cart off all the office furniture, and this neighbor had finally removed the last of the office furniture last night. So, I grabbed some trash bags and went from room to room and picked up all the stray post-its and random office garbage up off the floor.

There was a trash can in the old TC conference room that the neighbor had left behind, I am guessing because it still had trash in it. It was the TC designated recycling bin. I emptied it, then noticed there was some mold inside. I washed it out the best I could in the tiny sink available to me, then went looking for a can of Lysol that I had seen in one of the bathrooms. The Lysol had been taken. I thought that was a wee bit odd... then I looked around and realized... when the neighbor had taken all of the office furniture yesterday, they must have also helped themselves to the jumbo pack of fine soft Charmin toilet paper that we had just bought from Sam's Club.

This irked me so I walked over to their office. I decided to be casual about it, since I felt kind of ridiculous to have to bring this up... but I also felt that this was non-trivial. In the Old West stealing horses was a hanging offense; in my strange and terrible world ripping off a man's cushiony butt wipe (particularly an unopened jumbo pack thereof) is not a misdemeanor. Once in our neighbor's office, I had to wait around in the reception room while the pretty receptionist handled some calls. Just be nice, I told myself....

I tried to look calm. "Hey, I work next door, you had some people move a bunch of furniture out of our space yesterday, and it looks like they also took some things out of one of the bathrooms that belonged to us."

She blinked at me a little, then nodded.

"Can I talk with Jim maybe, or one of the folks that moved the stuff...?"

She called around and for some reason the people who moved the stuff didn't want to talk to me. OK. Jim, the boss guy, wasn't there but he told her everything that they took out of the bathrooms was under the sink in their break room, and the receptionist should take me there and let me take back whatever I thought was ours.

Well that was good of him, but where was my toilet paper? The receptionist led me to the break room then crouched down and opened the cabinet under the sink. I examined the variety of bottles and cans stored there.

"No... no... there was a green spray-can of Lysol but that is no big deal really... but there was this giant Sam's Club thing of Charmin toilet paper... that isn't under your sink there... do you know where it might be?"

By now a crowd had gathered around. The spectacle of me bumbling along on my toilet paper mission was the entertainment of the moment. Come on people it's not like I am saying I have a dirty ass at this very moment. Show's over folks, move along, nothing more to see here. The receptionist pulled a blue plastic squeeze bottle of some sort of Lysol-branded toilet cleaner from under the sink, and looked up at me with a sort of helpless expression on her face.

"Uhhh no... that's not... well um if you could ask the guys that moved the stuff yesterday if they took that toilet paper by mistake, I'd appreciate it... that was ours... I can't figure out what else would've happened to it." They all looked puzzled. I noticed the break room had a door to the outside. "Can I just leave by this door over here...? OK, thanks. Yeah."

Alas, it appears this heinous crime will go without redress. My personal theory is that one of the movers just decided to help himself to the Charmin. The real tragedy is, I don't think that I really learned anything from this episode. Well that and we are out of toilet paper at the office again. Life is hard.