The Curious Case of the Fan

Happy New Year. Do you dread going back to work after the holiday break? I do. I mean, I used to. Before I quit work, I dreaded going back to work every day I had off. And now I have a phantom dread when a holiday break ends or a Sunday night rolls around. It is a well-worn path in my psyche. For a long time I could not watch The Office without feeling a little sick to my stomach because it was too real. But I have been working on letting it go, one story at a time.

The Curious Case of the Fan

All stories have an agitator (antagonist?). As luck would have it, the agitator at work was my cube-mate, Joe. We sort of shared a desk. I had my own corner desk and he had his own corner desk but the crack of my desk met his and it was agitation at first sight. To sum-up Joe, he was explosively passionate, about anything really. It seemed he had endless causes: a.) The Master Cleanse, b.) Pescetarianism, c.) Burning Man, and he expected everyone to care. This day it was his desktop fan.

I was hard at work (obviously) and paying him no special attention until he burst out, "hey!". I was startled but quickly found my place on the computer again and ignored him. How anyone manages to right themselves from the continual torrent of Cubeland distractions without wanting to jump out a window is beyond me. A few minutes later, he said more poignantly "hey, stop moving my fan!" This is when I turned toward him to discern his cause de jour and how it might affect me. Joe seemed genuinely agitated as he turned his fan away from me, arranging it to blow into his face just so, as he had done, no doubt, several times before. He ignored my inquiring eye and settled his hot face back into whatever was on his computer. I was curious but remembered that curiosity killed the cat and so I too put my nose to the computer and said nothing.

Several minutes passed and I had mostly forgotten Joe was my cube-mate until he exploded, "hey, stop moving my fan!" It was precisely at this moment that I felt the full weight of how tired I had become of being interrupted by his outbursts, which propelled me to wheel around and match furrow to furrow, hiss to hiss. The ruckus drew attention and like gophers, people popped-up from their burrows all across Cubeland to watch, wide-eyed.

With everyone watching, Joe continued accosting me for moving his fan. I did not give a damn about his fan orientation and I was totally perplexed about how to tell him this. He was like, "you are moving my fan!" And I was like, "I disagree with the premise." Talk about a breakdown in communication. All of a sudden, it dawned on me--oh sweet, sweet, ahha moment--Joe's fan was moving itself.

When I tried to explain the curious case of the tiny vibration drawing the fan to turn, Joe's hot face turned incredulous, as if I was suggesting that inanimate objects could move themselves, which was exactly what I was suggesting, and so I piped-down and let the gopher people help him sort it out.

Joe went back to work, in his corner of the desk, and never mentioned the fan or anything relating to the incident again. And I let him.

__________

Weeks passed before I recounted the curious case of the fan to a few friends over dinner. I started laughing so hard, tears streamed down my face. What a surprising relief. I cannot tell you what my friends were doing, for all the tears, I could not see them.

In the moment, in Cubeland or anywhere, it can be so stressful and insane. People interact in Cubeland in a way they would not interact elsewhere. It is like a petri dish, where just about anything can grow and fester. As it turns out, when you are elsewhere, you gain perspective and realize that Cubeland is not your entire world after all, just a small dish-size of it. And you know you have a cabinet full of other dishes to keep you sane.