Ha.
It has been an age since I have written on Medium, or anywhere else for that matter. This is what happens when you’re having fun, I hear. Or when you’re dead. Stands to reason.
I have been writing a series of organizational communiques, however, but wouldn’t it be sacrilegious to call that type of writing…writing?
As you can tell, I have been settling in nicely in the office. I love my colleagues (I always make it a point to, as the alternative — hating them — is a tad too stressful especially when you sorta, kinda need to work with them on virtually all your projects.) Life has been fun, barring the 8+ hours I spend to and from the office. There is the lunch break that no one takes because we are all busy people concerned with the general upward metrics of the company (seriously, you have to believe me!) so we just sneak ashamedly into the kitchen to hurriedly eat our food and mumble a few words of conversation (‘baba, last night’s Game of Thrones made sense!’ ‘What do you think is the business model of the White Walkers and do you think we can adapt it to a subsection of our operational chain?’).
Hahahaha.
Damn. I got you.
Anyway, it is fun. Real fun. If you love working without supervision (and with the vague knowledge that although nobody is screaming at you every 15 seconds or so, you will have to deliver good stuff every week or you will become a tuxedoed hobo by next weekend), then, hey, I have your dream job.
Smile for the camera!
So, yeah, life has been pretty peachy for me. Couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Until the office toilet went and ruined everything.
See, we have lots of toilets downstairs, but upstairs we have just one. The ‘sleekest’, as one colleague said when he saw it. It has a shower head and scented oils and soaps that will make every straight guy want to bath slowly while humming something from Ed Sheeran.
It was our pride and joy. We loved it. We bragged about it when we went downstairs. We used to puff up our chests by the communal water dispenser and say ‘Hey Jack, ‘sup? Did you know I finished three reports today in the shower upstairs? *sips water like it’s the bestest of the Frenchest wines ever made* Three reports, Jack. Three. While in the shower. With the soap bubbles dancing around and catching the light. Three projects, man. Anyway how’s your day going?’
Note I speak in past tense, for yesterday, beloved, the toilet pounced upon me, and beat me into a moist, very ashamed, highly humiliated, pulp.
Oh God.
So there I was, packing my bags, getting ready for the day’s journey home. I had told the good lads “I’ll be off in five minutes, guys!” and they had said generally colleague-y things such as “alright, remember to draft the cumulative speech abrogative prerogative to the subliminal embolism of the defacto acquisition blabla Mosanto paralellogram squid.”
Naturally I was like, “cool” and waltzed to take a leek. After enjoying my vegetables, I went to take a leak.
It was mid-piss I realized that the bathroom door — which I had slammed with so much swag — was lacking a door handle. I refused to believe the suggestion of my eyes so I employed the sense of touch and realized that what I felt corroborated what I saw.
The door of the toilet — in which I was now locked — had, somehow, shed its handle.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo….
I sweated recklessly for a few seconds, pawing the door like a deranged cat before I realized I didn’t pack enough fingernails to simply erode the door.
I felt in my pocket for my phone to contact my team members on the office communication channel, considering fleetingly how embarrassing it would be when they open the door and I’d be at the other end, sweating sheepishly — but no joy! I had gone to the bathroom/toilet/booby trap with no phone!
HAAYY!
I started knocking, but if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it even make a sound? Jesus, extra sweat joined the previously sweated sweat on my forehead.
I looked down and the gleaming toilet bowl grinned malevolently and whispered “come and put the yansh again.”
So I looked around again. Time for a plan of action.
Hm.
The door opened inwards so I couldn’t just kick it down while smoking a cigar to highlight the badassness of the thing.
Where the door handle should have been was this square hole through which I viewed the rest of the world. I wondered, fleetingly, if this was the place I would die. Perhaps I would live in this toilet, writing notes on toilet paper before I died at the ripe age of 57 and someone would find my memoirs and print them out into a book titled Shit Happens: Recollections of A Man Forced To Gargle The Toilet Water. I would never get to tell momma I loved the dress she wore to my graduation ceremony and I’d never get to tell that girl the selfie she left in my DM was just OMG babe you’re so beautiful like I can’t.
Most importantly — and probably the saddest of all — I hadn’t even finished evaluating the degree of necessity of Caro’s body.
Dear Lord.
I walked to the wall cupboard and stared at myself in the mirror. I smiled wanly, then opened the cupboard. I saw a nail filer in there. An idea began to form in my head.
I broke the nail filed in two, twisted and turned until it could fit approximately diagonally into the square hole. I was feeling decidedly smart when I jammed my nail filer key into the lock. I had doubled the filer for more strength to open the door.
I slotted in my makeshift key, twisted, and…
…it broke cleanly in two.
Ha.
So I cried a little and stared at my haggard expression in the mirror. I realized that I should probably smash the mirror and slash my wrists with the glass shards. That would definitely be one way to escape this shitty prison.
I looked around and found a bunch of keys stuck in a corner of the cupboard and began another construction project. Stringing the keys together and making them steadfast by sheer prayers and faith, I jammed them into the hole again and turned.
Creak!
My heart thudded. Could this be it? Freedom…at last?
I turned again.
Creeeaakkkkkk….
My fingers were getting slick with sweat and I was losing my grip on the keys. It was only a matter of time before I slipped and the little progress was lost. I pushed with the last resolve I had —
plock!
A flood of light! I squinted before glory. I was once more on the corridor, freed from that toilet. I watched it sneer as I walked, unsteadily, shakily, away, a victor. But at what cost? I had broken an innocent nail filer whose only crime was being at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong guy stuck in the wrong toilet.
Na so life dey be sometimes. Eyah.
So I returned to my office — 2 hours after I had told them I was leaving! — , sweating, crying for joy. I announced: wow guys! I was locked in that toilet OMGOMG what a loss of productivity! All that time there and I would have used it to draft a magnomorific sponfificant zwenlism of the iteration of version 5 of the last modulation ha!
And they laughed and said they had all been locked at different times of the day in that toilet and they had simply messaged a team member with their smartphones to come release them because who doesn’t go to the toilet with their phones?
Pricks.
