Distraction
Every week begins with a team meeting in one of the small, poorly ventillated conference rooms at the end of the hall. Today, like every Monday before it, my reminder popped up on screen at the specified time, and I joined my four coworkers in the tiny room.
Like every other day, I found the monotone voices of my four fellow nerds gently lulling me into a sleep-like state. Body odors stagnate in the air as we all try to pretend not to smell them. Like clockwork, I found myself gazing around the room for something — anything — to keep my attention so I wouldn’t commit career suicide by falling asleep in front of my boss while he’s talking.
And then suddenly, there it was.
As I glanced just below the table, I could see that the coworker to my right — let’s call him Bill — had apparently stepped in dog shit. A thick, brown, caked-on mess, with bits of dead grass smashed into it, clung to the bottom of his ancient shoe, telling me that it wasn’t body odor I was smelling — at least not today.
Sufficiently distracted, my drowsiness gave way. Soon enough, it would turn to panic. As Bill crossed his legs, the offending excrement started to hang perilously close to my $80 Calvin Klein dress pants. With catlike dexterity I slid back in my chair, my leg (and pants) barely ducking under the approaching dog shit.
Then, as if I wasn’t already being tortured enough, this sadist started to shake his foot. What a time for restless leg syndrome to pay a visit. He was practically waving dog shit under my nose like a freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookie!
I had to readjust in my seat and fight off the urge to vomit. When I did, I coughed, and Bill must have thought that was a subtle hint because he saw me coughing and looking at his shoe. So he looked and saw the shit on his shoe.
At this point, the smell is making me light-headed and the proximity is making me downright nauseous, but nothing could prepare me for Bill reaching down with his bare hand and scraping the dog shit off of his shoe. Then, for lack of a place to discard it, he sat through the remainder of the meeting holding this dog shit in his hand!
I don’t know what the project status is, and I honestly can’t say that I remember much of what was said in the meeting. All I can be sure of is that I’ll probably wake up tonight with nightmares about what he touched with those hands before finally washing them.
