Packing the Heat of a Two-Foot Pink Feather Duster

The secretary for my building at work is probably not the woman you have so far imagined her to be. She’s in her early thirties, but before I found that out, I assumed she was younger than me. She swears like a wounded pirate when she thinks no one (who would care) is listening. She served a full term in the military (heterosexually, if you’re rushing to conclusions). She’s not really your stereotyped version of a secretary.

That’s why what happened to her earlier this year struck me as so funny.

First, let’s take a moment to talk about the cleaning service. Twice daily, a cleaning service sweeps through my building cleaning up the various messes we in the offices, lobby, lunchroom, etc. have created. About twice a week, they dust everything.

I approve of the concept of dusting my office. It’s one of the few cleaning chores that I do not naturally do myself. And for the Facebook readers among you, the pictures of my office I have posted will be more than enough to show you that dusting in there isn’t exactly simple. I have a lot of stuff in there.

Even so, I have no trouble spotting nights when the cleaning service dusted, no matter how groggily I stumble into the office in the morning. Most days, I turn on my light and see my things neatly lined up, stacked nicely, and generally tidy. Twice a week, it instead appears that all of my things were attacked by an army of birds such as those conceived by Alfred Hitchcock.

This is somewhat annoying. However, I know that the benefit of seeing dusting done well outweighs the inconvenience of straightening up. I’m not really complaining.

The reason I bring this up is that one morning, I discovered WHY dusting in my office causes this. I showed up and discovered my office exactly half dusted and an enormous pink feather duster sitting squarely on my keyboard. Ok. No big deal. I assume something came up.

Only one problem. I have no idea where that feather duster came from. Not my office, that’s for sure. So I did what anyone would do. I put in on the table in the middle of the offices for the cleaning service to easily find that afternoon.

That table is adjacent to the secretary’s cubicle.

That would normally not have been an issue for anyone. Again, our secretary doesn’t look very matronly. But on that day, in an absolutely unprecedented move, the secretary arrived two hours later wearing a bright pink shirt. Said shirt was the exact same bright pink color of the feather duster I had dumped next to her cubicle two hours prior.

She spent the next eight and a half hours having the following exchange with the thirty or so people who walked past that day:
Random coworker: “Nice feather duster! You playing maid today? Haha! That’s a good shirt! You need more frilly lace on the collar though!”
Secretary: “Heh.”
Random coworker: “No really where did you get that?”
Secretary: “It was just here this morning.”
Random coworker: “Did you notice that it matches your shirt?”
Secretary: “That might have been mentioned already…”
Random coworker: “Hahaha!” ::random coworker exits stage::
Secretary: “God dammit, why the f*ck is that stupid thing there?!”

Since my office is right next to her cubicle, I could hear all of this. It wasn’t very funny until the fifth time. By the fifteenth time, I was having one of my best days at work all year.