Thursday, 5 June 2008

Pheweeee - what a whiff!!

Today was a fun day! It was busy, busy in work and yet we still found time for a moment or two of complete hilarity...

Moment One: We had a couple of UK BD guys visiting today. They spent the entire time in the office pacing up and down the open plan office yelling into their cell phones. Okay, I get it. It makes them feel important. I just wish they would SHUT UP! Sit in a cube, talk in a normal voice...don't make so much noise that I can't hear myself think! I was sitting there quietly trying to work out why my numbers were $200's out when a loud rrriiiiiipppp echoed round the office. What the ??? ohmigod, someone has let rip with a huge fart. I mean, Hello!! Remember I'm here - this isn't a frat room or something!!! (No anagram intended!)

Now this continued on something of a theme today.... so onto Moment Two.

We had a couple of VIP visitors in today, and we always put the important people in the posh corner office. Our VIP settled himself into the desk and I went off to make a coffee. I knocked. I opened the door. I was assulted by a really bad smell. I fixed my smile. I thought "he must have had a bad scallop last night". I tried not to breathe. I left as soon as I could...

Dawn and I were laughing about Moment One, when we passed the corner office at lunchtime (after our visitor had left for off-site meetings). I dragged her in. She gagged as the place still smelt really strongly of cabbage fart. We then spent 10 minutes running round the office trying to find something to take the pong away, all the time whilst wondering what was in his case that could whiff so much!

After a bit of nasal detective work (they REALLY don't pay us enough!) we discovered that he wasn't actually to blame!! It was actually one of the plants that was whiffy, so we carried it away wondering how on earth our luck would be so bad that a plant would rot overnight in the one office that mattered....

About 5pm I was in Stephen's office when Dawn collapsed through the door and closed it behind her. She was almost speechless with laughter. "I'm glad you're in here. I couldn't tell you this beside your desk" (I'm near the corner office). "Paul's just been in to see me. He poured coffee into the plant yesterday. I just launched my water bottle across the room at him when he told me!!! He ran for cover and into the gents where I can't get him".

Paul is lactose intolerant and one of the guys in the office keeps buying him caramel dolce lattes. He usually gives them to me to dispose of (I give them to the sweet-toothed Americans), but Paul had been handed this one on the way into a meeting with the chap, so he dumped the whole sweet milky mess into the plant when they were distracted...and this was yesterday afternoon which explains why the office was sweet smelling yesterday, and not so much today!!! Scooby snacks all round - the mystery is solved!!

We made Paul go and confess!! Of course the poor visitor has been sitting in this room with the bad smell all morning, probably thinking A.) That the offices smell really bad and wishing he was somewhere else and/or B.) Kerry must think I've dropped a really smelly one. And, of course, I couldn't say anything to him because I thought he actually HAD dropped a really smelly one!!!

This reminds me of a time long ago, in a land far away (Malvern, L block) when Stephen walked into an office and announced "Jesus Christ, something has died in here"...which had me and another couple of colleagues running out of our offices and dragging him out and silencing him, whilst explaining that the "something" that had died was one of the occupants and he always smelt like that!!! Who's right? Who's wrong? Better to speak, or to suffer in silence?? A dilemma!

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