Ugh.
The hallways at work aren’t huge, but they can easily fit 3 people across. Whle walking back to my desk today, I notice up ahead that one of the more aged of the department was standing partially in the hall having a quick chat with a co-worker. From a good 20 feet away, I recognize the situation and I know in my head to hang to the left hand side of the hallway to smoothly continue on to my desk.
Yet, for some reason, my feet just won’t listen. I notice that as I keep walking I am going to be cutting it pretty close. “Turn you damn fool!” my brain is shouting, but it may as well be telling me to tap dance my way to fame for all the good it will do me. I am caught in some workplace gravitational pull that just has to take me into the path of a 60 year old guy who, much like the Titanic, just has no idea that his iceberg has come in.
10 feet now, just 5, finally I partially snap out of my stupor and try to execute the full body twist with the requisite flaring arms motion to avoid contact. Sadly, the best I am able to do is land a glancing hip check on this poor man who was probably just hoping to get his 15% senior citizen discount at the grocery store later in the day. Equally sadly, the combination of my 230 pounds in motion is slightly more powerful than his estimated 160 completely unaware pounds.
I successfully manage to knock him into the wall causing him to drop 1 pen, approximately 20 pieces of paper, and to utter one “What in the Sam Hill?”
I try to apologize and smile wanly as I slink back to my desk, but now I am pretty sure that I have a crazy old codger looking to teach me a little respect.
