Say What?

The other night over dinner, I told Lynn about a Major Incident that had happened at my workplace that day, about which I’d been completely oblivious until I'd headed to the break room on my floor and saw what looked to be half the Alexandria, Virginia, police department idling in the hallway. This despite the fact that, I’d soon learn, the incident had been extremely loud and had happened, in part, literally just outside my office door.

I bemoaned to Lynn the cruel irony that I’m one of the nosiest people around, but concurrently am pretty much the most oblivious. I delight in office gossip, but usually am one of the last people clued into it. This has only gotten worse in the 10-plus years I’ve been at my current workplace. Our staff is about 180 strong and is spread among three buildings, which means that when gossip finally reaches me—like light from some long-dead star—it may well center on a person I never knew I worked with in the first place.

But this incident the other day involved a person I did know, at least by sight and name. And it apparently involved a lot of shouting that I somehow didn’t hear. I’d been transcribing notes from a tape recorder and had headphones on at the time, but that’s stop-and-start stuff, at fairly low volume. You’d think I’d have heard the string of obscenities, accusations of racism and rambling delusions I’d later learn had prompted other staffers to bolt upright from their desks and, in some cases, to shut their doors. And which had prompted my bosses to call the cops, since history teaches that apparent mental instability and the workplace are not an ideal mix.

Long story short, there’s this woman who works in a cubbyhole office down the hall from me. She reports to a different boss than I, so I frankly don’t know quite what she does. She is so quiet that I couldn’t pick her voice out of an audio lineup. In my work life, she is so low profile as to be virtually nonexistent. But in that, she, of course, also fits the poster description of the “quiet, keeps to him/herself” type who becomes well-known only in infamy. Clearly, calling 9-1-1 in this case was the smart and right thing to do.

Let me just pause here a moment to say that I wish this person well. She apparently was holed up in a conference room, presumably along with law enforcement and possibly mental health people, when I left work that day. She was nowhere to be seen yesterday, I’m off work today, and the weekend starts tomorrow. For her sake, I hope she’ll be back at her desk on Monday—meds administered or readjusted, counseling in place, whatever—and ready to resume gainful employment. I’m in no way passing judgment on her. Everybody freaks out at some point or another. It’s just that some episodes are more chemically linked and flamboyant than others. Presumably she’ll never even know I’ve used her to introduce a blog post about my dimness to workplace goings-on. Yet I sort of feel I should apologize. Especially given the segue I’m about to make.

So. Again, I was complaining to Lynn the other night about how I never know about any juicy stuff that occurs at the workplace until after the fact. That was when she reminded me about the Computer Guy Firing.

This happened many years and a few employers ago, in an age when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and workplaces grouped their electronic resources in dedicated “computer rooms” that had to be kept cold, for reasons that to this day elude this liberal arts major and self-described technological moron. Nowadays, technology is so portable as to be stored on tiny chips in SmartPhones and iPads. But back then it was locked away in chilly edifices reminiscent of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. The contemporary workplace has IT departments and network administrators. Back then there was the lone Computer Guy, tender to and gatekeeper of the big machines.

The computer guy where I worked back in the early 1990s was representative of his species—equal parts mad scientist, 40-year-old virgin, Maytag repairman and Amber Alert suspect. With his bad haircut, narrowed eyes behind unfashionable glasses, three-day stubble, unsettlingly self-amused grin, wrinkled shirt and pants, and scuffed shoes, he looked sort of like what the actors Steve Buscemi and Gary Busey might produce, could they mate. That his office was essentially an isolation booth suited him and the rest of us well. Particularly younger female staff, many of whom he unnerved in the lunchroom with presumed small talk that sounded more like internal monologue, voiced mid-thought. Topics included things like the latest scientific research on bats, or the fact that various common household item easily could be weaponized.

Every once in a while I’d have business in the department adjacent to the computer room. I’d see him in there, behind the glass, adjusting dials or entering figures into a data terminal. I could feel the chill on my side of the door; staff in that department typically wore sweaters. But Computer Guy seemed immune to the cold. In fact, more often than not, his rumpled shirt was short-sleeved.

Since I didn’t see him that often and had no reason or inclination ever to seek him out, the surprise wasn’t that I didn’t know he was gone until weeks after he and my employer had parted ways. What was surprising—and confounding—was that I was among the last to know the spectacular circumstances of his departure.

A co-worker had been telling me about a bad date she’d been on. This had prompted me to cite Computer Guy as a metric of interpersonal disaster. She shuddered and said something along the lines of, “Thank God he’s gone!”

“Gone?” I asked.

“You didn’t know?” she responded incredulously.

That’s when I learned that late one afternoon, at a time of day when everyone else in the department next to the computer room had gone home, a female employee had looked up from her desk to the alarming sight of Computer Guy—in plain sight, with pants unzipped and joystick at full extension—happily and with abandon pleasuring himself. As the story went, he didn’t stop when sighted by his shrieking co-worker. Law enforcement was summoned. Computer Guy now is Howard Stern’s producer.

OK, I made that last part up. Anyway, Computer Guy’s vigorous response to social isolation had been huge news throughout the building. Where had I been? How had I not heard? The person who finally told me couldn’t believe I’d been unaware for so long. Nor could I. As gossip goes, this was the gold standard. Your typical office romances and rumored reprimands were penny-ante stuff compared with a full-frontal Workplace Whack-off.

Where had I been, indeed? Where am I ever? How is it that I always miss everything, from the mundane to the titillating to truly sensational? There are many more instances I could cite here, from over the course of my 30 years in the workplace. Employees long gone, affairs long over, skirmishes long concluded before I ever caught wind of them. I just don’t get it.

At any rate, this tale of mayhem and masturbation likely has succeeded in squandering whatever store of goodwill I built up with last week’s heartwarming post about the senior citizens in my life. So, I guess my work here is done.