Surviving the Office Cauldron

I have one thing to say and one thing to say only - you're going to have to do better than boiling me. Cut my brake line, lace my mid afternoon Diet Coke with strychnine, push me in front of a speeding car or force me to watch a selectman's meeting on community access, but do better than this. Death will not come easy for this proud warrior.

Anyone who has every occupied a cubicle, shared space with another carbon life form or been part of the American workforce has encountered the same dilemma that faced me yesterday - the regulating of temperature in an office setting. It seems that some of my colleagues evidently grew up in Ghana as they cranked the thermostat to a level that was comfortable only for gekkos, camels and some species of newts. They actually enjoyed watching the sweat drip off of my forehead while they carried out an Alokli West African dance and engaged in a limbo contest using the custodian's whisk broom. They fried eggs on the office carpet and burned insects without even employing a magnifying class. I nearly shed my Dockers for a dashiki, but quickly realized that they don't typically come in black.

Whatever happened to moderation? Whatever happened to the common good? Whatever happened to bringing a sweater to work?

It seems that whenever the air conditioner kicks on, it also emits a high pitched squeal that immediately alerts everyone in the office to race to their battle stations and automatically set the thermostat to "global meltdown." It's uncanny, almost like watching ants in a colony scrambling to mobilize around the queen. And when you try to point out that the rubber on the sole of your shoes is melting into a little black puddle, you're met with a sharp glare and a diatribe on the unparalleled freezing properties of air conditioning. Since when is freezing 72 degrees??

I swear, at approximately 2 p.m. yesterday, I was so feverish that I though I was stricken with malaria and looked like an extra from "Road to Zanzibar." I had set up my own Zumba class and hired most of the cast offs from Paul Simon's South African tour to provide some background music while I tried to answer the phone with two pot holders. The best part of the day were the many mirages that encompassed my thoughts - I saw a wolf/dog hybrid man covered in castor oil striking a spider monkey with a hickory stick, an old woman reenacting the "Odessa Steps" sequence from "Battleship Potemkin" and a circus geek biting the head off of a live chicken while reciting a soliloquy from Hamet. While I dry heaved into the office waste basket, I could have sworn that I saw a vulture circling overhead, just waiting to celebrate my imminent demise by plucking out my eyes and feeding them to her young.

So in order to avoid a similar situation in the future, let's set some ground rules - 1. Wearing an extra layer offends no one save for the one or two PETA fanatics who might complain about the sacrifices that went into a fur-trimmed jacket. 2. If you're so hell bent on catching a tropical vibe, take a Caribbean cruise, preferably utilizing a one way ticket. 3. Boiling your colleagues is as good for office morale as leaving used Kleenex on the copier or microwaving a pound of cod in the common dining area. If we can all just observe these simple points of etiquette, no one needs to fry and no one needs to die. We might even still be able to talk to each other at the next "visioning" session in the middle of the woods. All together now....kumbaya my Lord....KUMBAYA.....

Steve Boucher is a big fan of air conditioning, but would never use it to the detriment of his office mates. Nor would he ever eat someone else's ham sandwich out of the community refrigerator, leave a gift on the toilet seat or ask to borrow a five spot.