Brown is the Colour of ...

I read somewhere that brown is a warm colour that stimulates the appetite. Hmm...Except for chocolate, I am not too keen on putting anything brown in my mouth. And after today's story, I am sure this will apply to you, too.

This story happened long before the pandemic hit and nobody even heard about working from home.

For many of us, working in big corporations, lunch time is the best time of the day. I am not referring to the plastic casserole with stew or the left overs pasta from the night before. I am talking about the one hour lunch break when me and my colleagues were going out for a nice, hearty, cooked meal or a quick and tasty fast food option. We all agreed that bringing lunch from home was "social suicide" hence we always went out. We hated the downstairs canteen food, especially since a colleague found a cockroach on her plate, hiding shyly under a salad leaf.

There were a lot of different places, mainly small, close by, unbranded, obscure, fast food shops, but the best place for lunch was at the mall food court. At least three times per week we would jump in my colleague's blue car and we would go to a close by mall for our daily portion of carbs, sugar and laughter. My colleague was a 6ft 6 inches tall guy and, for such a tall man, his blue car looked so small, but it was always full of people, music, "no filter" jokes and nasty stories.

Driving to the mall was an experience on its own because he knew all the shortcuts and sometimes he even pretended to be a tram, by passing the cars that were standing patiently in the queue, waiting for the traffic light to be green. The tram lanes were fun and quick and we loved the adrenaline boost and the feeling that we were bad-ass bankers, breaking the law. I don't remember ever needing more than 10 minutes to get to the underground parking of the Mall.

Everyone was welcome and the car was usually filled on first come, first served basis. One time, even our team manager came with us because she wanted to buy a gift from the mall. It was her first and last time because when we got back and she stepped out of the car, in front of the bank, she managed to squash a huge doggo shit left by a nasty, careless owner on the sidewalk. It was hard to spot, given that it was concealed by the dark-brown, melted snow from the dirty pavement, so, for a while, she was not even aware of it. But the fresh turd smell surrounded us rapidly and followed us on the steps of the bank, on the hallway, continuing in the lift and back into the office. Staying inside the warm office, it got so bad that everyone started to check their shoes.

Some of my sensitive colleagues already started to gag so I decided to get away from the smelly office and refresh my makeup. I was also trying to stay away from trouble since I always laugh uncontrollably when someone starts to retch and, even if I stop, I start again because the noise keeps playing in my mind (I have a full, detailed post on my colleagues' dry-heaving experiences that will be published soon. Very soon!).

To my delight, when I opened the bathroom door, I saw my manager next to a sink, in a very unexpected flamingo pose. She was standing in one foot, with a big bunch of wet, chocolatey, crumpled toilet paper in her hand and with the other foot up in the sink, scrubbing frantically each crevice of the boot's sole.

Ha! I knew what was going on! She was the stinker! The one that made the whole office gag! In a few seconds, both of us had tears in our eyes: me laughing-crying at her and her, laughing-crying because of the eyes-burning stench.

What was even funnier was that she was wearing some posh, tall, expensive looking, knee high brown boots that were now covered in doggo doo-doo. The irony is that her trousers were similar to horseback riding equipment, in exactly the same brown colour shade as the poo. It's like she attracted it and managed to step on it so hard that it splashed all over the other boot. This was the Law of Attraction at its finest!

After the stinky event she never came with us to the Mall. I think, deep inside, she still believes that it was all a set-up and my colleague stopped the car next to the shit, just to test her eyesight. Personally, I don't think anyone would have been able to avoid it, since it was camouflaged so well with the dirty snow, but it's always nice to have someone else to blame for your shitty choices (pun intended).

Have a good one, everybody, and may you win at the Lottery of Life!