Peer Pressure
It was on the eighth floor of place my employment, inside the men’s toilet. I’m sitting there, doing my sit-down business because boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. I’ve just finished the dirty work and I’m about to perform my ablutions, but I delay it because I’m just flipping around on my phone. At this point, I feel something jump onto my balls. This was something I had never hoped I would ever experience, let alone talk about on the Internet. I shriek. Not a barbarian shriek. Not a Viking shriek. Psycho-Shower-Scene shriek. A huntsman spider has crawled out of the toilet bowl and jumped onto my low-hanging fruit. I bat the spider off, smacking myself in the nuts, and keel over in pain. The spider is now a corpse. Good news. My banshee wail has not gone unanswered. Bad news.
Someone comes into the bathroom and knocks on the stall door. “Hey, are you alright? Have you fallen over? I’ll call an ambulance.” “NO. I’M FINE. EVERYTHING. IS. GOOD. JUST SLIPPED. FINE. NO NEED TO CALL AN AMBULANCE. YOU CAN LEAVE NOW PLEASE.” I flush the world’s smallest predator to try and retain some of my inner pride, wash my hands, and make the very, VERY long walk back to my desk. My manager’s desk isn’t too far from the bathrooms, and he comes up to me afterward. “What happened in there, is everyone alright?” “Yeah… Everyone’s… FINE.” And then I make the dumbest decision of my life. I explain to him what had happened. The audacity of the man: He LAUGHS. He laughs so hard he has to sit down so he doesn’t hurt himself. His hyena/kookaburra hybrid laughter has gotten the attention of some of the other members of my team. They’re looking to get in on the funny, funny joke.
Bossman wheezes, “GET…GET HIM TO… TELL THEM!” Because I’m incredibly susceptible to peer pressure, I tell them. Like a moron. I’m going to skip past most of the laughter because it went on for what felt like forever. I come back from lunch, and my boss and two other members of my team come up to me as I’m sitting back down at my desk getting ready to get back to work. My boss is holding a piece of paper. “Look. We need to have a chat about something. I’ve brought two of your friends in the team as support since this is obviously not something that’s easy to talk about.” I am confused. “I have a blank HR report here. I’ll need you to fill this out. You confided into me that you were harassed in the workplace and it’s my duty of care to make sure the ‘POOPITRATOR’ is brought to justice.” robbomate