Bad timing

So I walk into the bathroom this morning, nod a curt hello at a guy who was exiting a stall, approached the urinal and got ready to do my bidness.

Then, in mid-stream, I realize the guy has not left the bathroom, but is standing behind me. I didn’t turn around, but I could sense his presence. Guys know these things.

Plus, I’ve been a little bit on-edge in that bathroom since there was an “incident” some months back. A maintenance worker claimed that he “surprised” a couple of fellows sharing a stall very early one morning. I have no more details, and we’ve been assured that neither fellow works on our floor, but I think it goes without saying that the situation calls for a heightened state of alertness.

Anyway, I realized that the guy – I don’t know him well, but I recognized him as somebody who works on our floor, but in a different department – is speaking to me. I think I’ve made my position clear on talking in the bathroom – I’m agin it. Perhaps a casual “How you doin’?” or “How about those Braves?” comment is OK, but nothing serious, and certainly no work talk is allowed.

So this guy says, “I may have heard wrong, but I was told that you were against us leveraging third-party resources to get our message out.” I swear, I’m not making this up.

I wondered how to respond to this fellow. First of all, not only am I not against what he said, I don’t even know what it means. He must have had me mistaken for somebody else. So I said, “That doesn’t sound familiar. Are you sure it was me you heard that about?”

He said, “I’m pretty sure it was you.” Well, there’s no chance in hell that anybody ever heard me say such a thing. But I was wearing my badge, and I caught him looking down at it, so it must have been my name that he was associating with this position on the third-party resources. Perhaps he misheard it, or maybe it was something close, like “Marty Wilson.” I wasn’t sure.

I decided the best thing to do was to play along. “Well,” I said, “I generally don’t have a problem with us leveraging third-party resources, as long as they stay on point. We don’t want them getting off the reservation, you know.”

He laughed and gave me a knowing look, and nodded in assent with my sage assessment. “Exactly,” he said. “Maybe I heard wrong, because I was surprised you would have a problem with that. It really helps our business case to have them out there, as long as we take care of the legality of it.”

“Absolutely,” I said, and by now I had convinced myself that I knew what we were talking about, even though I still didn’t. “Listen, there’s a time and a place for everything, but on this one, I say we go full-steam ahead. Strike while the iron’s hot, you know? We can’t afford to stay on the sidelines on this one.”

He smiled again, patted my shoulder, and said, “Without a doubt.” Then he turned and walked back down to his office to continue doing whatever it is he does for a living, and I went back to my desk, glad I could help out. With, you know, whatever it was.