THE TURQUOISE PEN

WOMAN FINALLY REALIZES
HER DESK IS DOWN THE HALL

Noël R. King

"People kept giving me dirty looks," Rose Ellen says, with bewildered look on her heart-shaped face, "and I had no idea why. It was awful!"

Ellen, it turns out, had spent two months working at a coworker’s desk without realizing it.

"Oh! I just couldn’t believe it!" she exclaims now, a good three months later. "To think that I had assumed this was my desk and then to find out it never, ever was. The horror of it was unimaginable. I shudder even now to think of it. Frankly, I was hoping you wouldn’t use my real name in your article. Can you give me a fake name?"

Hastily assured that her identity will be protected, Ellen (whose fake name is simply a flip-flop of her real name) continues, describing the details of her unusual case.

"There isn’t really much to say without making me look really bad," she says, "but if it will help anyone else who finds him or herself in a similar situation, I am willing to look really bad."

"I kept wondering who was always moving my pencils around and why I was getting phone messages and e-mails addressed to a woman named Susan, but I never put two and two together," she explains. "I learned to ignore this strange woman who always glared at me whenever she walked past my desk. I have a feeling now that her name is Susan. I was too traumatized to find out for sure if that’s who she was, but it all fits together when I think about it now. And I’m telling you, I do not like to think about it any more than necessary. Can I go now?"

Ellen’s sister, standing next to her for support during this interview, convinces her to continue for just a few more minutes, reminding her of her new mission. Ellen, after a moment of indecision, agrees.

She then says she wants to make sure others know what to do in similar situations. Most importantly, she says, she counsels people to ask around if they are unsure whether or not they are sitting at someone else’s desk.

"Look, I know it’s not always easy to ask in these situations, but it’s a simple step that could end up saving your job life," she says. "I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. If I had only followed my sense of unease early on and inquired about it, I might well have discovered in just a few days that I was sitting at another woman’s desk. In fact, I do not like to think too much even now about what could have been if I had only followed my gut feelings. It still upsets me more than I care to admit."

Ellen finally discovered her mistake, she says, one day upon returning from the restroom.

"I can barely describe this to you without shuddering, even now," she says, "but I know it is necessary so others will not follow in the same sad track. What happened is that I was coming back from the restroom one afternoon, at about 2:00. I believe it was a Tuesday. But when I went to sit in my chair, as I always did upon arriving at my desk, I sensed that my seat was considerably softer than it had been earlier that day.

"I tried to ignore it and get back to work, but my inquiring mind would not let it drop. So after about five minutes I began earnestly investigating my physical surroundings and discovered I was sitting in a woman’s lap.

"At the same instant, a coworker walking past turned toward us—because us it was—and said, ‘I’ll need that in just a few minutes, Susan.’ That’s when the full horror dawned on me. I ran weeping from the area and have not returned since. There, that’s the whole story. Please, can I go now?"

As she leaves her interview, Ellen discovers her VW Rabbit has been towed from where she parked it an hour earlier, in the chairman of the board’s space.

—As circumstances warrant, through her Turquoise Pen column Noël R. King, Reston, Virginia, reports on strange and wonderful things, including the danger of borrowing another’s desk.