Hot Sauce

So, my last post got me thinking about former coworkers and how I'm sure several of them would run in the opposite direction if they ever ran into me again. I'm absolutely sure that a certain someone from the book publishing days is glad I have left the state of Indiana forever, and I can't really blame her. Because of this:

Back at the book publisher in the late 90s. This super annoying woman, who we will call Penny, sat across from me. For some reason, she just bugged me. I can't really put my finger on it, but she was just someone that I wished would go away. One day, after a trip to Taco Bell, I had a genius idea. To this day I still don't really know what the heck came over me, I'll call it my inner 10-year-old. But, I put a packet of hot sauce on the floor in the hallway between our cubes and I jumped on it like I was launching a Nerf rocket. Well, it went flying directly at Penny's head and before she could move, duck, do anything really, it hit her right between the eyes. It was a perfect, beautiful shot. A direct hit. I swear that hot sauce traveled at a speed of 50 mph and I just stood there, watching in disbelief.

Now imagine this: Penny didn't find this incident to be humorous. She glared at me with hot sauce dripping off her nose, ears and chin, her hair plastered to her forehead. Who knew one little packet held so much sauce? I thought she was going to charge me, like an enraged rhinoceros. But she didn't. Instead, she cried. Oh no, not the tears! I hate crying at work. There's no crying at work! Simple rule: When your job makes you cry, you need a new one.

Not only was she crying, but she was carrying on about how I ruined her shirt and I would have to replace it. And, the shirt was from Banana Republic. Gasp! Oh no, not Banana Republic! There goes my paycheck.

Penny was also one of those desperately single people. You know the type, she would do anything to have a boyfriend, a husband, a man in her life. This was before the internet dating era, so her options were somewhat limited. So, she set her sights on Ed, aka Troff Boy (remember him, we met him here: http://kate-offtheclock.blogspot.com/2010/05/and-you-thought-your-coworkers-were.html) and made a play for him. A hardcore, suffocating, stalker play for him. And yes, he was immediately turned off.

It happened like this: A bunch of us went out one night and we met up at my apartment. Hot Sauce, as I was now affectionately referring to Penny, was bombed out of her mind. At one point, she ran out of the bathroom, with her pants around her ankles, because she heard Troff Boy's voice in the living room. Well, Troff Boy, wisely, decided to get the heck out of there for the obvious reasons. Hot Sauce followed him outside, attached to his leg, like a dog in heat. There was yelling and crying (again with the crying!) and eventually the police showed up. By then, drunk Hot Sauce was drunk driving herself home. Things were never quite the same again at work after that episode.

Now, I can't for the life of me imagine that Hot Sauce would stop and have a 5-minute conversation with me if we ever ran into each other again. And who can blame her? This incident occurred in 1998 and I can still picture that hot sauce, traveling in slow motion, and the look on her face as she watched the sauce approach. And I honestly just want to look her up today to say: I'm sorry for being such an immature idiot. Hmmm, perhaps it's time to do some Facebook searching. If I still lived in Indy, I'd offer to buy her lunch. At Taco Bell.