Over the weekend, I was asked to build a new laptop for someone’s assistant. Nice and simple, had it ready to go Friday afternoon, so dropped it off at their office. The assistant’s boss was there, so I handed it to them in its bag and watched them put it down next to their desk.

Monday rolls around, and the new assistant comes asking for their laptop. I relay the above to them and am informed that they just came from there, their boss thinks she moved it to their other workspace.

I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we all know the laptop is exactly where I saw it put on Friday. But no, I need to check the other places first. God forbid I make them feel stupid by using my eyes to check the place they say it isn’t.

We do a walking tour of the places the laptop potentially is and find nothing, so I walk them back to their office, practicing surprised responses in my head. “Oh, look, there it is,” I remark as we enter.

The boss looks over, pretends not to notice me grabbing it from the floor just next to their desk. No thank you, but that’s mostly due to shame preventing them from making eye contact.

All in a day’s work.

My new coworker, recent arrival from Asia, speaker of seven languages, announces to me:

Coworker: “I do a s*** now.”

Me: “You know, [Coworker], you don’t have to tell every time you leave your desk why you’re leaving.”

Coworker: “But I don’t want you to think I am leaving. Back home, you always tell your workmates why you are walking away.”

Me: “Okay, but here you don’t need to do that. I know you’re doing the work, so you can just come and go. Okay?”

Coworker: “Okay, well… anyway, I go leave a s*** now.”

Me: “It’s not leave a s***. It’s take a s***.”

Coworker: “Why would I take s***? That’s disgusting!”

Me: “No, you… huh… You know what? You’re right. English is weird. Well, whether you’re leaving one or taking one, no need to tell me, alright?”

Coworker: “I tell you none of my s***!”

Me: “That’s the spirit!”

I arrive at work to find my manager standing in front of the glass panel that’s next to my office door. He has his face pressed against the glass and his hands cupped around his eyes as if he’s trying to spy something in the darkness of the unlit interior.

Me: “Uh, good morning [Manager]?”

My manager jumps and whirls around, exhaling in relief when he sees me.

Manager: “Oh, it’s just you. Sorry. Uh, yeah, uh, I actually meant to call you and say you might want to work from home today. We’ve, um, got a bit of a situation here.”

Me: “A situation? What happened?”

My manager jerks his head back to the glass window as something audibly thumps against it. I look over and behold, there’s a bat, a legit winged sky-puppy, flying around my office, occasionally ramming into the windows as it tries fruitlessly to escape.

Manager: “It was on the reception desk when I got in. I… erm… shooed it over to your office cause it’s the closest one. I’ve called animal control, but they’re taking their d*** time getting here!”

I watch as the bat continues madly flying around my workspace, occasionally retreating behind the potted plant I keep in the corner for a rest before resuming its attempts to find a way out of its predicament. My manager continually freaks out every time it gets near the door.

Me: “How…how did it get in here? We’re on the fifth floor, in the middle of the floor, and all the doors require keycards!”

Manager: “I don’t know! I just want it gone!”

Animal control finally showed up an hour later, after most of the staff had turned up and gotten to behold the spectacle of our unexpected visitor destroying my workspace.  

Thankfully, the bat was safely caught and removed without harm (aside from my coworkers wanting pictures of it in the handler’s hands) and I got to spend the rest of the morning cleaning up my desk and scrubbing the ‘parting gift’ from what was technically my first client (at least that’s what my coworkers joked it was) off the windowsill.

At the time of this story, it is a Tuesday afternoon.

Boss: “Hey [my name], I have my monthly meeting with [client] a week from Friday. I would like to show them [analysis]. Would it be reasonable for you to do the analysis and to put that together into a deck by then?”

Me: “Sure, that should take about a week. If I pivot to it now, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Boss: “Okay, the client requires materials to be sent more than 36 hours in advance as a pre-read. Since the meeting is on Friday morning, we should aim to have things sent out on Wednesday EOD.”

Me: “Makes sense, shouldn’t be a problem.”

Boss: “Actually, the account team is probably going to want eyes on it first, so we should get it to them on Tuesday so they can do a round of revisions.”

Me: “…okay, that’s getting a little tighter, but should be doable.”

Boss: “Actually, [Department head] is close to this one, too, and he will want to review as well. But he is out of the office Monday/Tuesday, so you would need to meet with him about it on Friday afternoon. We would also need to show the results to the [product] team to make sure your conclusion isn’t running counter to theirs. They have a workshop on Friday, so maybe we could meet with them on Thursday morning. But they will need some time to really dig into the weeds, so we should probably send them a pre-read.”

Me: “…so you need the weeklong analysis by tomorrow afternoon?”

Boss: “…fair point. Let’s aim for next month’s client call instead.”

Manager: “There’s a guy in our department who keeps submitting reports that look like they were typed during an earthquake.”

Me: “Who?”

Manager: “[Coworker]. Look at this.”

It takes me seconds to realize his report has random letters missing, extra characters somewhere else, and some sentences that almost make sense, but not quite.

I decide to sit with him to observe him making a report, and it’s odd, because when he’s asked to explain his work verbally, he’s sharp. He spells fine (barely uses the built-in spell checker). He knows the material. I see no issues at all. 

A week passes:

Manager: “Look at this. Absolute nonsense again.”

Me: “But I sat with him. He was fine. Something must be happening between making the report and submitting it.”

Manager: “Fine, I’ll get tech support to look at it.”

I’m told that IT first tries to check everything remotely, from keyboard drivers to language settings, accessibility options, and all come up with nada. 

Finally, they sent someone down to observe him in person. I’m in the office, so I also get to observe this “observing” from my desk. 

The IT guy sits quietly behind him for about twenty minutes. [Coworker] is working normally… but he’s also demolishing a family-sized bag of chips at his desk. I’m kinda vaguely aware that he does this every day, but this is my first time focusing on it, and it’s clear the guy is making a mess of his keyboard.

IT Guy: “Uh… that’s a lot of crumbs.”

Coworker: “Oh, don’t worry. I got a thing for it!”

He reaches into his drawer and proudly pulls out a small handheld vacuum. Then, without hesitation, he turns it on and starts vacuuming the keyboard… hard.

I’m looking directly at his screen as I see keys depress in clusters, shortcuts firing, windows minimizing and maximizing, and one closing outright. One spreadsheet looks like it goes on a spiritual journey. The IT guy is staring, as transfixed as I am.

IT Guy: “…Can you stop for a second?”

Coworker: “It’s fine, I do this all the time.”

IT Guy: “Yeah. That’s the problem.”

IT Guy teaches him one new step: lock the computer before vacuuming the keyboard.

Problem solved.