...of charm and strange: the blog

During my temporary stint at Unnamed Software Company, I once was asked to deliver something to one of the upper floors of the building. It as brightly lit and terrifyingly professional-looking, so once my task was complete I was anxious to return to the land where everyone knew better than to ask me to do anything that required intelligence.

The problem was, there were many, many doors up there and I couldn't recall my way back to the stairwell. (I had brought several cheesecakes with me to mark my trail like Hansel and Gretel, but, embarrassingly, I had consumed all of them before reaching the third floor.) Most of these doors were locked. One of them wasn't. I pushed it open and found myself in a dark office. Suddenly, a voice came from behind me, scaring the bejesus out of me and inducing a flashback to high school, where being in the wrong hallway resulted in the deployment of a SWAT team.

"What are you doing in Boss Clay's office?" It was Linda G. I explained that I couldn't find the stairs, and was just trying doors. She pointed out that EXIT signs were very helpful when it comes to finding exits. I scurried back down the stairs.

When I got back to familar territory, Boss Kim introduced me to none other than Boss Clay himself, who happened to be the head of our entire division. It was something of a big deal for me to meet him. I didn't know (and still don't, really) what to say to someone so important, so I instinctively went with the only light bulb that went off in my head at the moment.

"Nice to meet you! I was just in your office." He stared at me and looked alarmed. I realized how odd that had sounded, so I tried to fix it. "No, I mean, you weren't there. I was just in there by myself." His mouth opened a little, but he still didn't speak. He was now staring the way you stare at something you grew in a petri dish.

More misguided attempts at damage control: "Oh, I didn't break in or anything. I was just trying to find my way to the stairs and got lost." Silence. "Don't worry, I didn't steal anything! Ha, ha, ha!" Isn't humor supposed to alleviate awkward situations? Well, one or both of us doesn't know what from funny, because nobody was laughing but me, and it was the kind of crazy person laughter that exists only to fill silence.

And that's why I was never asked to deliver anything upstairs again.