A Watery Affair

This afternoon, I came back to the office after lunch and as usual headed upstairs to my room. The office was practically empty cos it was still lunch time. And I love the office when no one is around. So nice, quiet and peaceful. So I head up to my room to enjoy the couple of minutes of solitude before the rest of them come back from lunch.

As usual, I'll log in my account and check my blogs and emails and all that. After about 15 minutes, I hear the girls coming back cos I can hear them giggling all the way from my room upstairs. Suddenly, one of them starts screaming my name from downstairs asking me to come down.

I'm not all that bothered cos these girls most of the time will always scream for me for the slightest thing. They're still pretty new here and not being mean or anything, but they're a little blur at times So, I walk down and they're all excitedly jumping up and down and pointing at the area just behind the reception.

I look in the direction they're pointing and get the shock of my life! The whole place is covered with water coming from the back. It looks like a nice little river forming there. I'm stunned and my brains practically stop working. Instead of running to the back to see what's wrong I stand there like some moron and just look at the pooling river of water.

After a couple of seconds and with those 3 stooges still screaming frantically at the pool of water, my brains finally start to unfreeze and I run to the back to find the source of the leak and discover that some smart little person left the taps running throughout lunch and it overflowed and made its way all the way to the front of the office soaking up the conference room and two other rooms downstairs and practically ruined the reception area.

There was so much water in the corridors that if I waited any longer, I would have probably needed a sampan to go to the back of the office. The water was left running for about an hour, probably since lunch time for it to cause that much damage. And the best part is no one admits it was them who left the taps on. I mean, who would, ya? My boss is going to freak out when she finds out about it and she can be scary when she's in one of her bad moods.

I know I'm safe from her fury cos I was out of the office practically all day and only came back during lunch. Phew, thank god for small miracles. In fact, I think I'll try and make an appointment tomorrow so I don't have to be in when the boss comes if. I don't really need to see the fireworks. I've been on the receiving end of her fury on more occasions than I care to remember ... LOL!

Anyways, after switching off the tap, I had to figure a way out to sweep all that water back out. I was a little stumped for a solution though. The best option would have been to vacuum the water up but unfortunately our vacuum cleaner is not the wet/dry kind so there went that idea. In the end I used the dust pan to scoop as much water as I could into buckets.

That was really a back breaking job, the amount of times I had to bend down, scoop water up and then carry that heavy bucket all the away to the back to dispose of was unimaginable. Luckily two other male colleagues came back and seeing as how I was more senior in the company, I bullied the in completing the job ... LOL! Seniority does have it's benefits at times. I know my back is going to ache later tonight.

All I wanted was a nice quiet Wednesday and I end up being the water boy. The place is going to stink like hell tomorrow. I'm sure you all know what stale, dampy carpets are going to smell like, right? This isn't the first time I've experienced a flooded office. Once in my previous job, the same thing happened too but that was even worse.

Some moron left the taps on before going home and when we came to work the next day, we were all greeted by a nice cascading flow of water from upstairs. And the moment we opened the doors to get in, all that water inside gushed out like some scene from Indian Jones and soaked all of us. I took the brunt of it cos I was the fool who volunteered to open the doors! I had to even go home and get a change of clothes. And the office stank for weeks after that.

I'm really not looking forward to the smell tomorrow. Maybe I'll go on a quest to look for Shirley of Hollywood or something ... hehehe ... Actually I don't even know who the heck Shirley is and that she was even living in Hollywood! :D
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