The Office: Part Five ("I'm afraid I'll go blind")

It's time you start getting to know some of the other characters of my former office. Like all good television shows, the development of character personalities is key.

There was this lady who was on my team. She was about 55, smoked two packs a day, drove an old sports car, wore too much make-up, dyed her hair extremely blond, outfitted herself in clothing made for 14 year olds, and doused enough perfume on herself each day to give all of China a new scent. Get the picture? Good. Or, ummmm ... bad. Very bad. We'll call her Dee.

At the station there was something seriously wrong with the HVAC system. On most days, it had two settings: see your breath cold and I think my eyeballs just started sweating hot. This was not one of those days. It was rather pleasant in the office.

Dee kept complaining about how hot she was. She kept saying how she was getting all sweaty and asking the rest of us if we were hot, too. Nope, not one bit ... totally fine. She absolutely was not getting any work done. She just kept complaining every 10 seconds or so about the heat. Hello menopause.

Then, all of the sudden she storms into one of the back offices (barefoot -- I don't know why I remember that, I just do). A few minutes later she emerges with a white XL FOX19 t-shirt. "I know how to take care of this," she says.

HUH -- that's funny. I wonder what she means. I had all kinds of ideas about what she may want to do with that shirt (create a fan, build a parachute, whatever). But, nothing -- NOTHING could have prepared me for what happened next. A raspy voice called out from over the cube wall, "Don't come back here, I'm takin' off my shirt."

WHAT?

A few seconds later she emerged barefoot, with her suit pants on, and the XL FOX19 t-shirt. She proceeded to parade around the office like that. I glanced up at one point and thought that I was going to faint. You see, what I left out of my earlier description of Dee was that she didn't EVER wear a bra. In this ensemble that was a particularly offensive habit.

I, being the totally socially appropriate former debutant of the office felt it necessary to duck into all of my coworkers cubes to discuss the situation. Mainly, to see if I was in a bad dream or not.

When trying to convince my friend Mark to look around the corner at the spectacle he immediately shifted his eyes firmly to the ground, moved to the safety of his cube and said, "I can't, I'm afraid I'll go blind."