Something has been going on since I've started working here that I've never related to anyone. It is one of those things that is just too weird to talk about without sounding insane. I'm going to make the attempt this morning, but don't say I didn't warn you, 'cause I did.
On my third day with this company, I was in the cafeteria and saw a fold-out card table with a cheap glass bowl on it. The bowl had a post-it note in the bottom that read "Do Not Remove" in bright orange letters. Neither the bowl nor the table were particularly remarkable; they could very likely each be purchased from Target or Walmart for under ten bucks each. I thought it was mildly humorous at the time, but I'd just started a new job and had more pressing matters on my mind.
So now, almost four years later, I go to that cafeteria and order breakfast. The bowl is still there, the table is still there. Nothing in the bowl besides the post-it note, nothing on the card table besides the bowl, and as far as I know they've always been that way. It's not like they're putting loose change or napkins or anything in the bowl, either. They've been there every day for the last four years and no one has touched them. I finally got up the nerve today to ask the cash register lady what the bowl was there for. The one I asked didn't speak english well enough to answer me, but the one behind her piped up quickly enough. Her response was essentially that she didn't know, and no one she worked with knew either. It has always just been there.
Now I'm seriously freaked out. I walk over to the table to get a good look at this thing and I notice there is no dust on it. Not on the table, not on the bowl, not on the post-it note in the bowl.
What could it mean? Is it repelling dust? Probably not; the simple answer is that someone comes along and cleans the thing every night. But why? What's it doing there? More importantly, why can't it be removed? What's so damn important about this bowl? Is it marking one of the laylines of the universe? Would our world--indeed, perhaps even all worlds--be endangered by someone removing that glass bowl from that cheap fold-out card table?
I actually found myself frightened to touch it. My imagination was running away with me by this point, and it was causing me very real terror. I thought, "What if something happens? What if, say, someone knocks into the table and the bowl falls off? What will become of us?"
My rational mind clicked back into place a moment later, I chided myself for being silly, and walked to my office, leaving the bowl right where it was. I'm not afraid to move it; I know that if I do, what I will find is a ring of dust and perhaps an impression left in the soft surface of the card table. I just would rather not. That bowl's got a long history of sitting right where it's at, fueled by nothing more than the willingness of others to obey written instructions.
I'll be damned if I'll be the one to spoil it.
