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The Incident
By Jeff | July 4, 2007
Let me tell you a little true story that happened to me at work about an event that will forever be known as “The Incident.”
Imagine if you will, me sitting at my desk at work. The easiest way to describe this area is from the cubicle structure seen in the movie “Office Space.” Classic flick. Anyway, the ‘partitions’, for lack of a better word, do not extend as high as the ones in the movie. They reach about waist high. This makes them low enough that you can sit down and still view all the activity in the room (which in my case is actually called Mod D - short for Module, but you get the point - it’s a really big room) and high enough that there is enough privacy where someone would still need to physically get up and move toward you to see what you are doing. The monitor is in the center with about 3 feet of desk room on either side so that there is plenty of room for personalizing and working. This should give you a good enough mental picture so that you can fully realize the predicament “The Incident” actually put me in.
Next, let’s briefly describe the characters in this story. To my immediate right is a fellow co-worker who we will call “Mary”. “Mary” is a nice girl who I feel is on a similar intellectual level as I am and who frequently laughs at my jokes. Basically, I like her - like her as in I enjoy talking and working with her, not like her like her… I’m still married and she’s actually gay. Anyone with a good sense of humor - and by good sense of humor, I mean anyone that laughs at MY jokes - is okay with me. To my left is another co-worker who I sometimes refer to as my gay friend, only because I would venture to say that there aren’t too many normal heterosexual men that have used that phrase. What can I say? I’m not normal. We will call him “Nick” and he has two different octaves of speaking voices and is quite open in his remarks. And then there’s me. The best way to describe me is to picture the perfect man. Now imagine if that perfect man was losing his hair a little bit, didn’t have great muscular definition, was a tad bit over-weight, and wasn’t rich… at all. Yeah, baby… that’s me! An average pizza-cravin’, football-lovin’, heterosexual, Texan-American that is also tall, dark, and handsome.
So, once again, imagine me sitting at my desk. I have just finished taking a call and I’m cleaning up my notes on the account so that if there are additional issues or questions, the next representative will know what I have educated the customer about or done to the account. While focusing my attention on my computer screen, “Nick” joins me in my cubicle area. He does this from time to time to see what I’m doing or to check my phone to see if I’ve downloaded any new songs that he might want to copy through the Bluetooth technology. It’s no big deal. At least, it wasn’t a big deal until I turned around.
Picture this in slow motion. As I turn my chair around on it’s swivel, to my virgin eyes’ surprise, there is “Nick”, within a foot’s distance mind you, with his hands on his zipper. WHAT THE….?!!! What are you doing? “Something’s wrong,” he says. You’re telling me! He then explains that he doesn’t actually have a zipper; it’s a button fly. I don’t give a flyin’ flip. We’ve gone way past T.M.I. Man or woman, you just don’t do that. “I was just trying to fix it.” Then go fix it in your own cubicle. Good Lord! Of course, “Mary” is laughing her head off and I’m not 100% sure at this point if I appreciate that response from her. It’s not a gay-thing, or a homo-phobe thing. It’s a man thing and a space-honoring thing. There are just some unwritten rules that every man is just supposed to know about.
- Don’t talk when using public restrooms
- Don’t look when showering together (i.e. - college dorms, school locker rooms, etc.)
- Don’t change the channel during a football game
- Don’t fix your fly in another man’s cubicle
They aren’t hard rules to follow. Everyman knows them, or at least I thought they did. Maybe that’s why some men are gay. Maybe they are missing the code in their DNA that has these unwritten laws listed. I don’t know. All I do know is that I may need serious counseling. I’m not sure if I can watch enough Dr. Phil to get these mental images out of my head. Any thoughts of encouragement would be greatly appreciated as I continue to cope with what will forever be known as “The Incident.”
Topics: gay, unwritten man laws, work, work cubicle |
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