Maturity In The Workplace

Let’s talk about maturity in the work place, specifically, not forcing your political beliefs on others (which naturally seems like a given—but maybe that’s just me).

So on this particular workday, which seemed like any other workday: long ,boring, with no lunch break in sight, I found myself see-sawing between concentrating on my work and a full bladder. Thus began my B-line pilgrimage to the men’s room, an event usually not even worth mentioning, only that before I could enter the restroom I was stopped by a fellow co-worker: a tall beefy guy who worked over in logistics riding forklifts all day.

“Oh my gosh— a real live rock star!” he’d exclaimed from behind our mandatory masks, his dark eyes cheerier than I’d ever seen them in the six months of casual conversation we’d exchanged, “I can’t believe it.”

“Who, me?” I’d replied, trying to downplay my efforts I’d been working quietly towards for over a decade now.

“Yes you, everyone told me how you were at the Grammy’s last year and that your songs are on the radio!”

“Yet, I’m working here with you,” I answered dryly, swallowing back the fact that because we couldn’t sufficiently tour right now (i.e. pandemic), I went out and got a job. So what if my Degree is in Performance Arts.

“Still, just as good!” he said extending his hand into a fist bump, “I’ll support you.”

Wait until you hear ‘Sorrow’, I remember thinking. My cover of a Japanese pseudo-satanic trap-rock ballad by Anna Tsuchiya that would have anyone without any publishing power running for the hills and swearing that I was affiliated with the illuminati.

But little did I know what was supposed to have been an inane and uneventful trip to the restroom was yet to be over.

After detangling myself from that awkward conversation, I made my way straight to the urinals to do my business. Only while caught mid-piss did I realize highlighted in the middle of the startling white porcelain bowl background was the name “Trump” written in bold black marker— plain as day. And what was even more jarring, was how it had been intricately positioned at penis-firing level, akin to some sort of sympathetic witchcraft ritual to desecrate the name of someone that you hate.

As a Democrat, like the rest of Hollywood, I wasn’t all that stoked to support a certain fellow who fought an alleged gangster named ‘corn pop’, or a woman who laughed after being asked whether or not she’d ever smoked pot before, despite prosecuting others to the fullest extent of the law for such a futile crime. Nor am I a ‘Trump Democrat’, but this—this seemed insidious, weird, even evil?

And as if by instinct, my legs carried me to the next stall to see another similar signature scrolled in the toilet bowl this time, which leads to an even more daunting question, “Who on earth got on their knees in a public bathroom in order to share, or better yet; FORCE their political beliefs on unwary stall users with full bladders?”

Fast forward a few days later and another associate has revealed to me how someone has broken the antenna of their mid 00’s sports car because of their political bumper sticker. I inquired, simply out of curiosity, because this could go either way regardless of who you support here in Texas. Certain biases or ism’s can lead to an attack of any sorts. “Trump” he said.

Nonetheless, we are amid a global pandemic, and after a slow re-opening, it seems regardless of external efforts, everything is still drying up. So the obvious inequities and misbehaviors have come to light, which itself has any sensible person genuinely questioning ‘Democracy’.

As for my two cents, when it comes to casting a vote; I vote for adult reeducation from top to bottom— an equitable reason to shut down society again as the sort of mind frame existent in America today can be just as lethal as contracting coronavirus. So much for the Space Age, huh? #2020