Monster in the Stalls, Part II
After eating a quiet deskside lunch of a Wendy’s triple cheeseburger or something similar, I often like to take some time to myself. Time to reflect. Time alone.
For those moments, I stroll to the ladies’ room and choose a stall near the end of the line. That way, people in a hurry can use the stalls nearer to the door and still have a nice two- to three-stall buffer of personal airspace.
It very often happens, right at these times, that a certain person bangs open the door to the ladies’ room, stomps over to the stall right next to mine and angrily sighs her way into it before slamming the door shut and completing the process of my distraction.
I had my suspicions as to the culprit’s identity, figuring it was a woman who frequently stomps and sighs around our office in general. I was even starting to wonder if she purposely made note of my bathroom excursions and followed along to unnerve me.
Today, however, something even more unsettling occurred.
I figured the stall for differently-abled urinators would be safe. Who would go through the trouble of following me all the way over there?
Not only did someone bang open the door and stomp down the aisle… This person rattled my stall door.
Picture every movie you’ve ever seen in which a killer, bully or angry drug dealer done wrong hunts for his victim in the restroom. Remember the sweaty apprehension of the victim crouching on the toilet’s seat. That’s how this woman made me feel, very briefly. I couldn’t even gasp aloud in my shock, although I later heartily wished I’d thought to say “Hey” or “JeeZUS” or, at the very least, “Tsk!”
I saw the woman’s feet. She wasn’t the one I’d suspected. In fact, her pants, shoes and manicure were deceptively nice.
I could go through the trouble of walking our floor and inspecting shoes to reveal this woman’s identity. What would I say when I found her, though? “Hey… thanks for scaring the crap out of me — No pun intended!”?
Some day a real rain will come and wash away the scum… the rude people of the earth.
