Years ago, I worked in the wing of a WorldCom call center in Memphis, Tennessee. Yes, all that implies.
We were a small development team of eleven people. On one end of our wing was a large conference room where we held almost daily meetings. One Friday, our Director scheduled a pitch-in meeting, meaning everyone should bring a dish from home and we’d all sit around eating and making small talk and discussing the release we were working on.
Oh, YAY. Nothing members of a development team love more than a pitch-in.
Already disgruntled, our problems were solved when the Thursday afternoon before the meeting, the women’s bathroom on the other side of the conference room exploded and….uh….flooded (although, it wasn’t all that liquid)….our conference room.
It was now referred to (by me) as the shit room. It stunk, and we all left early.
Late Friday morning, I see our Director skipping into the shit room with her dish from home. She uncovered it and placed some plastic utensils and plates on the table. And soda bottles and cups.
All exposed to the still floating shit in the air.
She sing-songed: “Come on, ya’ll! Grab your dish and let’s commence to pitchin’ in!”
Stunned: “Are you serious? It’s full of shit. Literally. Full. Of. Shit. There are brown stains on the walls. It still reeks of sewage. The carpet is wet. The walls are wet. Are you serious?”
“Oh, Karen. These things happen in the workplace. Don’t be so dramatic. Now, come on!”
And do you know what happened next? One by one, the ten little developers carried their dishes from home into the shit room and took their seats around the table.
I kept my dish to myself and called the conference room phone from my desk to act like I still gave a shit.
