So I’m a little worried here, folks.
Something pretty freaky happened to me at work, and I’m not talking about some old dude giving me the creeper eye. Plus, it happened during Halloween week, so I’m just a bit paranoid.
So let me set the stage. Back in August the fine folks in human resources decided to implement a friendly little fitness challenge. It worked like this: Participants would be assigned a colorful cardboard shoe with his or her name emblazoned on it in black magic marker. This shoe would be taped to the wall at the bottom level of the main stairwell. The only way your shoe could travel up the stairwell (eventually to the end on the 7th floor) was by walking, running or biking. Everyone kept track of his or her miles, and by the end of October you were supposed to have finished your trek. Of course this was much easier if you were training for a marathon. These people got off to a fast start and quickly made it up to the coveted 7th floor, after which they probably got a prize of a cheap water bottle.
As for my shoe…well, I was flailing around 3rd floor. I wasn’t proud, but at least there were plenty of other people well below me, and as long as I wasn’t last, I was okay with that.
I know what you are probably thinking. What the hell does this all have to do with a freaky Halloween-ish story?
Well, here’s what happened.
One day last week I was trying to get in some extra exercise by taking the stairs. I had plenty of opportunity to do this since I was testing out some labels on the zebra printers. My desk is on first floor, whereas these printers are on the 3rd and 7th floors. Now this particular testing was quite cumbersome, especially since I never really knew when the *$%#@ labels were going to work. I could end up making a trip to 7th floor only to discover that my label did not print at all. After a while this got quite old, and I was just a bit cranky, not to mention sweaty.
It was during one of these “label runs” to 3rd floor that IT happened.
Just as I approached the 3rd floor landing…in fact at the EXACT MOMENT I got to the 3rd floor landing, a cardboard cutout shoe dropped off the wall and landed right at my feet. I picked it up so I could stick it back up, when I discovered that IT WAS MY OWN SHOE.
Now what were the chances that out of maybe a hundred shoes on that wall, my own would fall off the wall at that precise moment, only to land right in front of me? Surely this was a sign. I braced myself for anything, i.e. blood to start pouring from the wall, a huge swarm of flies, or maybe a few creepy kids saying “Red Rum” over and over.
I stuck the shoe back on the wall and slowly backed away. The shoe was trying to tell me something, and it was probably along the lines of “You’re only on the 3rd floor in the trek challenge. Get your sorry ass moving!” Or maybe the message was more simple, like, “Yo, this stairwell is haunted.” However, it could have also meant a number of other things.
Top Ten Things My Cardboard Cutout Shoe Was Trying to Tell Me:
10) Those super cute backordered shoes I ordered 8 weeks ago finally shipped! (They did.)
9) STOP. Your label did not print again. (Again, this was true.)
8) The corporate world is crushing your soul. Do I really need a jumping shoe to tell you this?
7) Only 52 more shopping days until Christmas!
6) You will win the office trivia contest and claim total awesomeness.
5) You weren’t supposed to eat the Perkins muffins. They were only for people in THAT row of cubicles.
4) Subway for breakfast AND lunch? Really Anne? (Yeah, it happened. I’m not proud.)
3) Your co-worker will play you a Def Leopard song you don’t recognize. (This was true too.)
2) You will get stuck in a long meeting and miss the IT department chili and salsa cook-off. (Sadly this came true also.)
1) The Jonas Brothers are breaking up.
Annapalooza 