18 August 2006

Howard Hughes Redux

I know I am not spozed to post about work lest I get dooced. But this is not really a work post per se. It is more of a cubicle-land post that could take place at any giant faceless corporation where people are cruelly crowded together like chickens in a PETA-unapproved cage.

I don't know what has happened in the past few days, but suddenly my little section of cube world has become a germy hell. All around me people are sick, coughing, hacking, sneezing. It sounds like a bad day on a tuberculosis ward.

I am trapped here in my little 6 by 6 foot box, furrowing my brow and glaring in the general direction of the sickies, though I can't see them beyond the 5 foot 8 inch cube walls towering over me.

I love the girl who sits in the next cube, Rachel, but we are opposites in many ways. She is a young thing while I am in advanced stage of decrepitude. She still believes in romantic love and family - I believe in a nice quiet room of my own which I shall share with 64 cats. She thinks the outdoors are scary and dangerous, but it is so-called civilization that scares me. She can sit blithely in our workplace and say "I guess I just tune the coughing out."

I can kill snakes and ford rivers. I can face down angry marauding pit bulls. But being cooped up in here all day with the coughers brings out the hypochondriac Howard Hughes in me. Rachel plainly thinks I am insane. She may just be right.

For instance, I can imagine the toxic, viral air swirling around and settling in green waves just at shoulder level where I can most effectively breathe in the infective agents. Infective agents that will no doubt make me sick on the weekend, which is something that ALWAYS pisses me off (if I am going to be sick, I want to skip work to do it at least, dammit.)

I have my Clorox wipes out. I am trying to breathe as little as possible. I am about five minutes from wearing shoeboxes on my feet.

Pray for me. And in the mean time, I will be over there smacking some sick cubicle dweller upside the head with my red stapler for coming in to work instead of staying home on the couch with wadded up kleenex and with Oprah and Regis where they belong.

Linkateria is full of fabulous fun, as always.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh how I feel your pain. I worked for two and half years in Cubicle Land, and I'm pretty sure I was sick, or potentially sick at least one and a half of those years.

Here's to a rocking immune system!

Anonymous said...

Have you heard of Airborne? It's an herbal supplement invented by a teacher to help fight germs and viruses when you're in a closed environment. I've never taken it, I saw it when I was buying earplugs for the plane last month. But it might help?

Anonymous said...

I know exactly how you feel! With each passing year I get more and more paranoid about germs at the office. I won't even touch a magazine in my doctor's office anymore (and I'd really prefer not to sit in the chairs).

Regarding Elizabeth's suggestion, I tried Airborne before and during BlogHer to make sure I didn't catch my husband's cold and it apparently worked. I never did catch a cold, nor did I get any travel cooties.

noncommon said...

we're (me & Roxy) are getting over the crud right now. airborne didn't work this time around.

(this is why you exit the bathroom with the papertowel on the knob - oooo icky germs - that make you feel like crap, and make your nose snot till all hours of the wee morn, and make you cough, and your eyes itch, and your throat hurt. this is why the towel ms. stapler - this is why!) ;) sorry, couldn't resist.

SUEB0B said...

Hey, Cameo - I am not just ready for the paper towel, I am ready for the Full Body Condom.

Besides - the paper towel didn't do you any good, did it? Back atcha, LOL

noncommon said...

damn ya! actually, you made me so self-conscious, i stopped.
AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!
(ha)

Anonymous said...

Relax, suebob. I once read that when a person is symptomatic, they're past the point of contagion. We're contagious before we even know we're sick. If this is true, then relax.

And don't trust any non-symptomatic person to be non-contagious ever again!!!!

I'm so sorry you work in a cubicle. Cubicles are my proof that the Prince of Darkness has returned...and has found a fine career designing office environments. Cubicles do to the soul what ballet does to our dogs (feet). Lotsa deformity.

meno said...

When i used to work in a cubicle and someone around had a hacking cold, if i put my headphones on and turned the music up loud, i KNOW that helped keep the germs away.

Denial. My forte.

Suzanne said...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Oh, so many of the classic lines you have in this post continue to crack me up long after I read it. I'm just going to keep laughing.

Wanda said...

I have two words for you....

Wanda said...

Let's try that again...
neti pot

SUEB0B said...

I have been down both the homeopathy (airborne) and Neti pot roads and found them sadly lacking. Neti pot especially. I really, really don't think your nose was meant to be rinsed out every day. It just wasn't. So now I am high and dry and paranoid.

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