A Gross Day At Work

It was a rough day at work.  A co-worker was off and the boss was back from a week and a half of vacation, so it wasn't your typical Friday at ZCO. We were busier than a cat in a sandbox, and I was stressed out.  But on top of the workload and stress, I was also grossed out today - something that doesn't easily happen.  You see, for the past few years, I've been eating lunch with some of the guys from the engineering department.  At first, some of their guy talk would gross me out, but any more, nothing phases me.  I can go on eating my lunch and not miss a bite while they're talking about gross things. They've made me pretty hardened.  But they didn't have me quite hard enough for something that happened this afternoon at work.

As I mentioned, a co-worker was off today, and he stopped by after work to pick up a bushel basket of chestnuts that another co-worker had brought him.  Please note that the bushel basket had been setting in his chair at his desk during his day off.  Let me stop the story and say that the bushel basket full of chestnuts was quite the topic of conversation to everyone that came into our cubicle today.  Flashback to the late afternoon: a co-worker from customer service came down this afternoon to pick up some papers from us, and she picked up a couple of the chesnuts out of the basket to take home and show her small daugther.  One that she had picked up had two teeny tiny holes in it.  I told her that they must be worm holes.  We chatted some more and we decided to open up one of the chestnuts so we could see what the nut actually looked like.  I put it on the floor and stomped it with my size 8 1/2 Doc Marten, and we started to examine it.  That is, until we saw a tiny worm in it.  I threw it in the garbage so fast it was a blur.  My co-worker got a big laugh out of me being grossed out by the one tiny worm in the chestnut.  Flash forward to after work.  I was working over trying to catch up and my co-worker stopped by to pick up his chestnuts.  We talked for a moment, and then he picked up his basket and left.  I got up from my desk and started to walk down the hall to the printer when something caught my eye at my co-worker's desk.  There in the seat of his chair was a few dozen of those tiny worms.  I was grossed out.  I actually could feelthe warm water building in the back of my throat.  I didn't know what to do - I knew I couldn't just leave there there to crawl all over our office, yet I was too grossed out to touch them to get them off of his chair.  So I did what any scared woman would do in this situation: I found a can of extra-strength Lysol and sprayed about half the can on the worms.  I kept spraying until they weren't moving.  I left a post-it note on my co-workers computer monitor telling him to not sit in his chair, and then I got the hell out of there.  As soon as I got home, I emailed him at home to warn him, too.  I sure hope he checks his email at home this weekend, or else he's in for a big surprise Monday morning.