That Time That We Almost Had A Pet At Work.

During one particularly boring day at work I was re-reorganizing the machsan when I heard a shrill scream emanate from the other side of the room. Further investigation revealed that we had some sort of bug-like creature hiding behind the water cooler on the counter.  The shrewd creature in question did not appear to be a fan of my coworker and went with the "if I can't see you, you can't see me" approach hoping to blend into the counter top and fade from our minds.

My coworker however, was not so easily fooled. Luckily for the creature (I use the word creature because my coworker insisted on standing in front of the cooler shrieking every time the bug made any sort of movement thus blocking my view and eliminating my chances of discovering the source of her obvious dismay be it bug, rat or water cooler.) she seemed to have no intention of brutally murdering it but instead was content looming over it while yelling various insults in its general direction.

At some point another coworker walked in to make herself a cup of coffee and wasn't overly thrilled to discover that the water cooler (and heater) was being held captive by her seemingly less sane coworker. The situation was explained and both coworkers agreed that the best course of action would be to stand close (but not too close) to the counter staring and yelling at the creature until it either left or disappeared. Much to their dismay, the steadfast creature proved to be a worthy adversary and hid behind the cooler with unwavering determination. 

After watching the three struggle I decided that perhaps it was time to offer my services. I found a cup and moved the water cooler off the counter exposing the poor little creature. I plopped the cup down on top of it and then remembered that the back door was locked and had a very loud and annoying alarm that went off every time you touched the door. This was going to be slightly more complicated than originally anticipated...

The minutes ticked by and I began to wonder how the manager would feel about our obvious predicament. Almost as if on cue, the manager strode into the room to see why none of her employees were in the store. She took in the situation and then, since even she was unwilling to face the alarm on the back door, she told us to leave it under the cup as a pet (until it ran out of air and suffocated to death).

We stood around staring at it for a while watching its futile attempts to escape from its plastic confines. I'm still not entirely sure what kind of bug it was, sort of a cross between a cockroach and a cricket. Now that it was trapped in a plastic cage of death, my coworkers saw fit to take pity on it and decided that it was kind of cute and might make a nice pet after all.

I gave them an incredulous look followed by an "are you kidding me!?" and a "you do realize that its suffocating to death...?". They declined to comment and resumed their arduous task of making coffee (and preventing me from lifting the cup to let more air in)  while their new pet continued to make pitiful attempts to escape or at least find more air.

When they were done making their coffee I took a pair of shoes that I had been organizing on the shelves and gave the poor little bugger a (hopefully) swift and relatively painless death. I then wiped it off of the bottom of the shoe and counter and laid him to rest, in the garbage can. 

R.I.P. nameless bug-thing, you will be missed....