So Goddamn Pissed Off

Yesterday a police officer came to the office. No one knows why he came to the office. Hell, I think most people, isolated in their cubicles, didn't even know he was there. I only learned about it when I stopped to talk to Mike, one of the IT dudes, about how awesome it would be to use our office building for the backdrop of a nerdcore rap video. He was lukewarm on the idea, but his face lit up when he shot back an idea for a short zombie film.

"Now THAT could be interesting," I said.

"Did you see that cop in here?" he asked me, completely one-eightying the conversation.

"In the building or in this office?"

"Right here in the office. He walked right into Helen's office."

I looked toward Helen's office. Lord knows why because there was no cop in sight. Maybe I wanted to try to pick up some of the police officer's psychic aura.

I turned back to Mike. "Like during lunch or earlier this morning?"

"Dude, like ten minutes ago. How did you miss it?"

"Middle of a task . . . had the headphones on. I don't know."

I returned to my desk, and it got me thinking about another time we had a run-in with the law. Or well, almost had a run-in with the law.

This was way back in 2003. I'd maybe been with AII for three or four days at this point. It was most definitely my first week. The week before the 4th of July holiday.

Donald had just had an alarm system installed in the house, his house, which also doubled as our office. I worked on the first floor at the time. Donald sat in the messy den at the front of the house, which was directly behind me. Helen Fick, at the time, sat directly across the room from me to my left. And Tonya Cotten sat with her desk butted up to mine. We sat so close we could always tell what the other one had had for breakfast.

We were toiling away, doing whatever in the hell it was that we did back then, when suddenly the alarm system went berserk for no apparent reason whatsoever. Donald shouted something unintelligible, like "Wowfik!" or "Yadziktus!" or something else. I don't really remember, but I'm nearly certain it wasn't an actual word in our world.

He got up from his chair and double-timed it to the alarm's control panel, on the wall in the hallway. Everyone else, assuming the nightmare would be over soon, remained seated, fingers plugging ears.

But it didn't stop. No matter what combination of buttons Donald pressed, the alarm would not go off. So, he did what any rational human being would do in such a situation, he attempted to rip the control panel from the wall. When he found his human arms too weak to accomplish the task, he set about finding some sort of smashing instrument. It didn't take long before he found a perfectly suitable smashing instrument . . . the hammer.

He started wailing away on the side of the plastic panel with the hammer, continuing his unintelligible and, at this point, wet-mouthed tirade. Within a minute or so, he had the panel in his hands and the mind-shattering siren came to an abrupt halt. I remember seeing him hold the plastic panel in his hands. He looked at it, shrugged his shoulders and tossed it into an already overcrowded and messy hall closet.

Donald returned to his desk and put the hammer down, literally. He began to rub his temples and mutter under his breath, likely embarrassed at the emotional tirade he'd just paraded out in front of all of us.

Then, the phone rang. It was the security company. I have no idea what was said by the security personnel, but I can recall Donald's half of the conversation.

"Hello?!"

. . .

"Yes, everything is fine. Just this fucking alarm system goes off for no reason at all! This is the third fucking time it's done this since we had it installed!"

. . .

"No!"

. . .

"No!"

. . .

At this point, his face reached a color of red that can only be described as nuclear meltdown.

"I said no! If you send someone over here right now, there's going to be trouble! I mean it!"

He slammed the phone down and hopped out of his chair. He raced up the stairs, moving with a speed and agility I've not seen since in Donald Marx.

When he returned a couple minutes later, he was slapping a clip into a handgun. He tucked it into the back of his already too tight khaki shorts and paced the office. Then he pulled up a chair and sat just a few feet away from me.

Keep in mind, this is still within my first handful of days in the office. I have no real idea what kind of person Donald is. All I can think about is the sound of the clip being clicked into position and the way that pistol looked in his meaty hand. I start carefully eyeballing the office. There's a window directly to my right. Since it's the first floor, I could probably dive right through it and come out in pretty good shape. Maybe some deep tissue cuts from the glass. Maybe some bruises. Maybe a broken wrist or something. But I could live with that. These are the sacrifices we are willing to make when faced with our own mortality.

Better than being a hostage or a murder victim.

I started playing the whole thing out in my head. I needed a job. I couldn't just quit. But damn, who wants gun violence in the workplace? And what would my wife think when I told her, if I got a chance to tell her?

I started to imagine someone coming to the door and this whole thing snowballing into some weird hostage/workplace gunman news story. I imagined the house being surrounded by SWAT officers and news vans blocking traffic for blocks around.

Then, Tonya got up, grabbed her purse and left. She gave me a knowing look as if to say, "Let's get out of here while we can."

So I twisted up all the courage I had. Mind you, the gunman I called Bossman was sitting only a few feet from me and if he had it in his head to shoot something, I didn't want it to be my back as I was highstepping toward the door. So, yeah, my courage got twisted about as far as I could, and I followed Tonya out into the daylight. The bright, sweet daylight.

We decided to take an early lunch. It was only a little after ten, but we thought an early lunch was certainly better than getting shot in a standoff with the police.

When we returned some hours later, the situation was resolved. Helen Fick had answered the door when the security man came to the house, and she'd sent him away, ensuring him that everything was okay. Then, she'd berated Donald for his behavior for the better part of the time we were gone. Donald came downstairs shortly after we got back, and he had sheet creases in his cheek, which told us he'd been napping.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have gotten my pistol out. I really shouldn't have done that."

He started to scratch his arm furiously.

"It's just I was so goddamn pissed off!"

And here I am seven years later.