The Imminent Sludge Monster

Occasionally I experience strangeness in the workplace. The level of strangeness seems to equate in some way to the location in which I experience it. I thought nothing could top the note in the bowl I wrote about in my very first blog entry, but today I had a contender crop up.

I was in the restroom, in a stall, taking care of my daily necessary. There was a fellow in the stall next door who left his shortly after I left mine. He and I were the only ones there. Never got a look at him, just a glance at his feet, which were unremarkable. As he was leaving, I heard him pour something into one of the sinks. Normally I wouldn't care about something so trivial, but afterward he announced it, and I quote: "OK, I just poured coffee into the sink. The drain's slow, if you see it and it looks like something else, don't be alarmed. It's just coffee."

Instantly my mind kicked into gear. Can I trust the feet of a complete stranger? He just poured some strange substance down a sink. I don't know what it was, I didn't see it. Yeah the drain's slow, but it ain't that slow. It'll be gone by the time I'm done in here. All I have is his word. Could be coffee. Could be radioactive material. How can I know? He told me. Why would he think to do that? If it was just harmless coffee, surely he wouldn't need to announce to the world what he'd done. Or maybe he's just neurotic like that. Or paranoid. We have enough safety regulations around here to ensure a good healthy paranoia crops up in anyone who works here.

What if it's something hazardous? I'd better get out and have a look, right? Everyone might be in danger.

That's when it hit me. I was not exempt from the paranoia rule, and all the safety regs had been at work on me too. It's got us all jumping at shadows. I left the stall and didn't even have a glance or a sniff at the sink.

. . . If some brown mucky monster arises from the city sewers and tries to kill us all, at that point I will feel regret.