Adventures In The Workplace

 

I love almost everything about my job. I love what I do, I love working with the people that I do, and I love the location of our office.  Unfortunately, the office location is both good and bad.  We’re located right in the middle of Historic 25th Street in Ogden, Utah so we’re close to a lot of things; however, we also have a few issues that we are constantly dealing with which I will explain in a moment.  Before I do though, those of you who are familiar with Ogden, Utah know that 25th Street is historic for a reason.  For those unfamiliar with the area, let me tell you a little bit about this part of town.

Our tale begins with the opening of Union Station, at the west end of the street, 1869.  The Ogden Union Station Depot became the hub for the Utah Northern Railroad, and
served as a major railroad junction.  During the early 20th century, 25th Street housed retail shops, restaurants, ice cream parlors, hotels, and laundries making it a center of activity in Ogden.  The street was also a common site for illicit activities such as gambling, prostitution and narcotic sales. In fact, the area developed such a seedy reputation that famed gangster Al Capone allegedly said that Ogden was too wild of a town for him.  Urban legends also tell of a system of underground tunnels that bootleggers created during prohibition to move alcohol from Union Station to the Bigelow-Ben Lomond Hotel located on the east end of the neighborhood.  (I have looked for these tunnels in our building, but they seem to have been closed up during renovations. I don’t doubt that they exist though.)  The area was cleaned up in the 1950′s and is still home to a variety of businesses, including restaurants and retail shops.

Now that you know about the area, let me tell you a few things that the tourism board probably won’t tell you.  First, my office building, Creson Plaza, is haunted.  Yeah, haunted.  No, I’m not making this up.  I’ve experienced things, other people have experienced things, and it gets all sorts of creepy, especially at night.  I even found a website dedicated to strange things and even they say that the building is haunted.  Specifically, they say that “[t]his is an office complex that is reported to be haunted by several entities. Employees report hearing the sounds of children playing in a restroom on the third floor.”  Guess where my office is.  Yep.  We’re on the third floor.  In fact, we’re right next to the bathrooms.  And yes, I’ve heard children playing in there.  And yes, it seriously freaked me out.  We need to get us some ghost hunters in here.  They’d have a blast.

The second thing that the tourism board won’t tell you is that there are a lot of crazy homeless people who just wander 25th street at all hours.  (I’m not being rude.  A lot of them are literally crazy.)  Thankfully most of them are harmless.  As the weather starts to turn colder, these people need a place to stay warm so they start finding ways into the various buildings.  In the time that I’ve worked for Centercode, we’ve had people come into the office looking for work on more than one occasion.  We’ve even found them sleeping in the stairwells and running naked through the halls.  (Some things cannot be unseen.)  This week though, I experienced something that will take me a long time to forget.

Because the building that I work in is so old, and because it’s haunted, I don’t tempt fate by taking the elevator.  On Monday morning, I was heading up the stairs to the third floor.  When I got to the third floor landing, I noticed something on the ground.  It looked like a turd, but that’s just crazy, who would poop in the stairwell?  Since I was no longer running, I had a moment to take in the aroma which quickly confirmed to me that somebody left us a present right in the middle of the floor.  Somebody had apparently gotten into the building over the weekend and dropped a huge deuce right there in the middle of the landing.  (This is why we can’t have nice things.)  I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t somebody who had a home with indoor plumbing that they could go to so it stands to reason that we have a hobo infestation.

Anyways, I could go on and on about how nasty this was, but there’s really no need.  I told everyone in the office about the poop and we have all tried to avoid the stairwell ever since.  I have almost forgotten to take the elevator a couple of times, but the smell has made its way out of the stairwell and into the hall which serves as a very powerful reminder to turn around.  I really wish that the building cleaning crew would make their way to the third floor, but with the haunted bathrooms, I can’t really blame them.  But I digress…

I told you about the building being haunted so that you would know why the cleaning staff avoids the third floor.  And I told you about the poop in the hall so that I could share this little nugget of information with you: Hitler gets mad at everything. There are even videos on YouTube that prove my point.  (For those unfamiliar with the Downfall internet meme, I suggest you check out this article.)  Apparently, Hitler also gets mad at hobos who poop in the stairwell.  See how it all ties together?

 Thanks to my friend Schmidy for making this.  It turned a truly horrific experience into something that I can laugh at over and over. (If you can’t see the subtitles, turn on closed captioning.)