Office Scandal

At my work, there are a lot of people who choose to bike in rather than drive or take the bus, myself included. Luckily for us, the office has showers we can use to freshen up so us sweaty bikers don't stink up the whole place. This is especially important for me as I work at the front desk, and having a receptionist that looks and smells like she came straight from the gym probably wouldn't be all that great for business.

I work very hard at not waking up any earlier than I have to, so I've gotten into a good routine. Leave the house by 7:40 at the absolute latest, which gets me to work about 8:10. Take a very quick shower, dry off, get dressed and pretty myself up just in time to grab a cup of coffee and start work at 8:30. It's worked really well for me so far. Until today.

7:40 rolled around and I was still packing my bags. I was only a few minutes behind, but with my schedule a few minutes has the potential to make me late. I hop on my bike and pedal as fast as I can (which admittedly is not very fast) to try and make up for lost time. Miraculously, I get to work the exact same time I normally do, but the adrenaline was still with me so I grabbed my bag of clothes and rushed to the shower. After a quick scrub down, I step out of the shower and reach to grab my towel...which isn't there. I'd left it on the towel racks in the common area. Which left me in a bit of a pickle.

Now, to give you a good grasp of the situation, I drew out what the shower area in our company looks like:

(The weird curvy things for the doors are supposed to represent which way the door opens)

The towel racks are in the common area, and I know that my towel is no more than two steps away from the stall I was in. I also knew for a fact that I had forgotten to close the door to the common area, and that most of the people that work in the service department directly outside of the door had already arrived. I briefly tried to conjure up a way to open the door to my stall and quickly sneak over and shut the common room door before anyone sees me - I am, of course, butt-naked and dripping wet. I gave up on that idea pretty fast because if it didn't work and someone saw me, I wouldn't be able to look them in the eye ever again. I mean, we're at work. It's not a place where being seeing naked is excusable. Not to mention my dad works there, so it would then become incredibly awkward for him and the coworker. Just a bad situation overall.

Suddenly I realized that I could call the front desk on my cellphone because my friend covers the phones for the first 30 minutes of the day. If I reached her I could get her to come and throw my towel over (the stall walls don't go all the way to the ceiling) and I would be saved! Not half a second later I was dismayed to realize that I didn't bring my phone into the stall, so I woefully discarded that plan. What was left for me to do? I started work in 15 minutes, I didn't have all day to sit around thinking. Finally, reluctantly, I turned to the pile of discarded clothes from my bike ride in, picked up the long-sleeved running shirt I wore in, and started drying off with that. The fabric was horrible for absorbing water and left little bits of black fuzz everywhere, but eventually I got dry enough that I could get dressed and step out of the stall to get my towel without the fear of being exposed.

With that, my problem was solved. But I couldn't get properly dry before I got dressed, and didn't have time to get undressed again just to finishing drying off, so I spent the rest of the morning feeling damp and more than a little silly. Lesson learned: ALWAYS shut the door to the common room. And that Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy was right: always carry your towel.