Tuesday, March 13, 2007

that guy is out of order

The bathroom on the third floor of the building I work in is out of order. It has been out of order for as long as I can remember. It is not locked, the door remains propped, slightly open, but a large sign aggressively taped to the front declares "Out of Order." Now we can debate the semantics of the phrase "out of order," what a bathroom in order might entail, whether or not, in a philosophical sense, order can ever exist, or hypothesize that if the predominating order of the universe is entropy, that human life itself is "out of order," and that of course the bathroom on the third floor of the Chicago Theological Seminary, just adjacent a posse of vending machines, is, and forever shall be, "out of order."

But that still does not explain the behavior of a colleague of mine.

The soul-crushing boredom of work + a tedious ride in an elevator can result in some interesting discoveries. Co-worker got into the elevator just as the doors were closing and seeing that we had next to nothing in common, our topic of conversation strayed down some unorthodox path. Somehow we got to chatting about the bathroom on the third floor. That's when I found out that said facility wasn't out of order, or at least that my colleague still used it like it was perfectly fine. "How on earth did you figure that out?," I asked, perplexed.

"I just went in and used it anyway," was the simple, direct, bewildering reply, "I'm just that guy."

So now I can add yet another category of 'that guy' to an ever growing list I've compiled over the ages. There's 'that guy' who sells moisturizer on the Red-line every morning, who gets on at 47th street and proceeds to inquire if anyone wants any "body oils." There's 'that guy' who comes in every week or two and drops $300.00 (!!) on poetry. And there's 'that guy' who goes to the deli place and orders sandwiches with "just turkey and bread." Actually that last guy is me. But anyhow, as i was saying, I have a new 'that guy.' Now there is 'that guy' who randomly defecates in public restrooms with signs on them stating they are 'out of order' just to, you know, make sure they really are not in service.

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