Waiting for Gouda

One of my job duties here at the Front Desk was to greet visitors who come into the office. This was generally not a terrible difficult or time-consuming thing. But sometimes… sometimes…

Your typical office visitor fits into one of three categories.

First there is the person who just wanders in and is lost. You wouldn’t think this would happen much here, since we are on the third floor, and anyone who has made it as far as the third floor really aught to know where they’re going. But it still happens. We’ve had a couple of people who have strolled right in, apparently thinking that our office was the preferred route for exiting the building. I really don’t see how one could be so confused that they think Suite 3-E is somehow equivalent to the front door. But these people are out there. One guy flung our office door open and ran past my desk in a huff. As he hurried by, I leapt from my chair, ready to faithfully defend my company’s property from what was clearly some sort of enemy invasion. I asked if I could help him, at which point he shook his head and replied, “I’m just leaving.” With that, he dashed right into our large conference room, from which the only way to leave the building is a three-story plummet to the sidewalk. As it was a slow day, I was inclined to let him try it, just to liven things up a bit. Generally, you don’t have to do much with the lost and confused folks.

Once they realize their mistake, as this poor fellow soon did, they sheepishly slink back out, often backwards, and stand in bewildered confusion out in the hallway, wondering how their lives could have gone so horribly wrong, as I sit and laugh.

The second sort of visitor is the salesman. They are hard to pick out right away, since they are often dressed in the sorts of business suits that legitimate guests might wear and usually are not carrying a large placard that says I AM A DOUCHE BAG WHO IS HERE TO WASTE YOUR TIME, despite my letters to the City Council requesting such an ordinance. It soon becomes fairly clear, however, as soon as they start talking, usually about high-speed copiers. I don’t know what the hell it is about high-speed copiers that some schmuck comes in here every other week with a pamphlet. There must be something about the building, some sort of subtle and arcane signal, known only to the peddlers of office equipment, that fairly well screams Unbearably Slow Copies Made Within. Now, the fact that the copy machine I happen to have access to is only marginally faster than the one they had on the Flintstones, inside which a prehistoric bird sat and pecked out the image on a slab of granite, is beside the point. I am not buying a high-speed copier. The company is not buying a high-speed copier. The company may not even be aware that high-speed copiers exist, since every brochure ever dropped off by some shiny-faced schmuck who just wanted to “touch base” goes directly into the trash. At a very high speed.

What I generally do with the salespeople is this: Relying on my cat-like reflexes, I spring from the desk in a one-and-a-half twist somersault so that I land softly on my feet directly behind their unsuspecting, yet well-groomed frames. Then, using my intensive knowledge of sixteen types of martial arts, I quickly break every bone in both of their legs so that they collapse in a heap in front of the desk. I am careful not to draw blood, because I think we all know who would have to clean that up, don’t we? Then, as he lay there, writhing and clutching his extremities, I go to the closet and…

Oh wait a second. That’s what I would LIKE to do with the salesman. What I ACTUALLY do is just smile all nice-like and tell them that all decisions are made in the corporate office. Then I give them a phone number, which may or may not be accurate, depending on my mood, and wait for them to scurry out like so many cockroaches.

One time we had an honest-to-goodness door-to-door windchime salesman wander in. Carrying about six huge windchimes, dangling from his arms. Naturally, I heard him coming from a mile away and was able to intercept him before he got too far into the office. That sort of jangly, tinkly cacophony is just what I don’t need, you know?

The third and final type of visitor is the expected guest. They are the worst. This happened a couple weeks ago:

An unholy entourage of six people showed up for a meeting with our brilliant and handsome President. They filed in like lemmings and stood in a pile near my desk, all of them looking rather confused. I knew that they were in the right place, because I was told to expect six people to arrive around ten o’clock, and the odds of two different groups of six people showing up at about the same time surely must approach zero.

Despite knowing who they were and the fact that I needed to usher them into the conference room, I asked “Can I help you?” as politely as I could muster, as office etiquette dictates. They all looked at each other, and then at the sign on the wall and then back at each other again, nervously, shifty-eyed. Nobody seemed to want to talk. Finally, a man who might be described as the leader broke the tension and said, “Is Mr. So and So here?”

Mr. So and So, of course, is the man they came to meet with. Well, there’s just no way to smoothly segue from that awkward beginning to having them park their asses in the conference room without basically ignoring the question and gesturing half-heartedly toward the conference room door. After herding them in like a good sheep-pig, I invited them to take a seat around the conference table. This was apparently far too complicated for them to immediately comprehend, for they stood around for a while. Not studying any individual too closely, I was reminded of a small ant colony as they sort of wiggled and danced around in place, not sure of what to do. Finally, the leader deciphered the complicated suggestion I had made and picked a chair. The rest began to follow his lead, and that’s when it got ugly.

Office etiquette also commands me to offer guests beverages. So, I say, “Would you like anything to drink?” to the group at large. I may as well have asked them to name all the inert gases from the periodic table. Eyes rolled back into heads. All manner of strange facial tics started firing around the table. I do believe one of the women just plain fainted dead away. Clearly I had over-loaded their circuits, so I offered a little help. Perhaps, I thought, if I reminded them of what some categories of beverages were, they might be able to wrap their minds around the concept. “Coffee, juice, soda pop,” I said. I always make sure I say “Soda Pop,” despite its rather childish sound, because one never knows whether the guests are from some backwards corner of the midwest or from the more dignified east coast, and generally speaking, the more familiar words you can throw out there, the better. Thus, with Soda and Pop, I figure I have it covered.

At this point, I pause. They are all looking around cautiously, and I know why. They don’t want to be any trouble. They really don’t. Office etiquette goes both ways, you see, and so I can’t entirely blame them for their hesitance. In some ways, we are all just pawns in some much larger game, the rules of which were written many eons ago by men none of us will ever know. I imagine that the first time three Neanderthals got together in a dank and cold cave somewhere, one of them grunted out an offer for fresh icicles, or whatever he might have had at hand, and the other two looked at each other… well, Grok, we don’t want to be any trouble…

And then I say it.

“Water?”

Tiny lights behind twelve eyes all click on at once. Ah. Water. Water is the essence of “no trouble.” Water is cheap. Water is easy. Water seems acceptable to accept. The leader pounces on the offer first.

“I’ll take a water,” he says. And then I see it coming, as sure as anything. Like dominoes around the room they fall, one by one.

“Water,” says another guy.
“Water,” says the tall lady.
“Water,” says the chubby one.
“Water.”
“Water.”

I know they don’t all want water, especially those last two guys. But what are they going to do, say, “I know everybody else is having water, but if you don’t mind, I’ll take a martini, extra dry” ? The last two guys are getting water because they asked for water, but not because they really want water. Oh, I realize I’ll never know what they really wanted, and I don’t really care. I just found it interesting… okay maybe not interesting, exactly. Or funny, really. But something.

“Okay, six waters,” I say, just for the sake of recapping, and because I figure anytime you can have any word spoken eight times in under thirty seconds by seven different people, you might as well go for it.

I retreat from the hive-mind and head to the kitchen. Six waters. Six glasses of water. Six glasses.

I open the cupboard. No glasses. As in zero. As in not a single blasted one in there.

Okay, no big deal. I’ll just grab some out of the dishwasher and wash them. Great. Fine. Whoopie. Open the dishwasher.

Two glasses. That’s it. Two. And I realize now that I either have to ask the colony to share two glasses (which they might just have gone for, now that I think about it) or I need to come up with something else. I contemplate having some of them drink out of measuring cups and random bits of tupperware, for there sure is a lot of random damned tupperware in the cabinet, tupperware that will undoubtedly never, ever, ever be used again, a precarious pile of parts that has built up over the weeks and months and years. I decide that it would be a little too weird to carry into the conference room a quart-sized, square plastic container full of water, even if I was able to find the matching lid, a shaky proposition at best.

I have no choice. If I want six glasses of water for these people that remotely match, I have to go scouting. I must go desk-to-desk, looking for dirty glasses. Do they pay me enough for this? Apparently so, because off I go, randomly snatching empty glasses that my fellow office monkeys have selfishly left to sit empty and idle atop their unruly stacks of paper. Around I go. Here a glass. There a glass. Everywhere a glass, glass. Not to mention the plates and silverware that silently fester atop workspaces all around the land, growing God knows what. But these are not my concern. I have four glasses. I have enough.

Back to the kitchen to wash by hand. I hope that those people weren’t terribly thirsty. As my sponge is all soaped up and ready to go, I think maybe I hear my phone ring. Could it be? Scrub. Scrub. I think it is. Rinse. Rinse. Yes, it certainly is. Run back to my desk, and just as my hand touches the receiver, it stops. Son of a…. Back to the sink. Scrub. Wait a second, is that my phone again? Scrub. Rinse. Yes it is. Dammit. Back to the desk. Answer. Back to the sink. Scrub. Phone. Dammit. Rinse. Desk. Answer. Sink. Scrub. Rinse. Phone. Dammit!. Scrub. Desk. Answer. Sink. Scrub. Rinse.

After approximately twenty seven minutes, I have six clean glasses. Finally. I imagine six dry and brittle skeletons sitting around the conference room table, frozen in the positions they assumed right before they perished for lack of water. I get ice. Ice. Ice. Ice. Ice. Ice. Good.

I fill each glass with water from the gluggling water cooler and place them on a little tray, one by one. A co-worker walks in and smirks. Oh yes, ha ha ha, you dirty… Make fun of the Errand Boy and his little tray of water glasses. Ha ha ha ha… See if you ever get another phone call again, bitch.

Finally, I carry the tray into the conference room, who knows how long it has been now. Luckily, they are all still with us. I feel kind of stupid carrying a tray full of water glasses. There simply is no good way to carry a tray full of anything in an office environment in a dignified manner, is there? I feel like a cross between the Sun-Maid Raisin lady and Rosie, the robot maid from the Jetsons.

And now what? I cannot simply set the tray in the middle of the table and expect them to get their own water, can I? No, that just won’t do. I have no choice now but to circle the table like a bloody waiter, handing each individual ant in the colony their very own glass. Here you go. Water. Water? Water for you. Here you go. Water. Water.

Of course, some of the glasses are nice and full, and I’m balancing the tray with one arm and handing out with the other, and did I mention that I am not, in fact, a flipping waiter? I haven’t had to practice my tray balancing skills since… well… ever, really. Handing a glass to the leader, who I have affectionately begun to think of as the Queen, I twitch a little and water slops out onto his pants.

Hmmm… I’m not sure, but that just has to be a serious breach of office etiquette – wetting a guest’s pants for him. Not good. It was only a little dribble of water, though. Just a spot. Did he notice? Not sure. Should I apologize? Should I try to wipe it up? That could make it worse, having some office boob fumbling about on his pants with a napkin.

Best to just ignore it and keep going. Water. Water. Here you go. Water. Have some water.

And finally, I’m done. Can’t wait until it’s time to order lunch.