was as though I was never there. I walked out of that room and down a hallway, towards the parking lot where I had left my car, but the sickness of my pre-board jitters caught up to me. It was time to find the nearest men’s room. I looked up and down the hall, but there were no public facilities to be seen. I pushed open a door marked “Workroom Floor” and saw lots of workers in a huge, gymnasium-sized warehouse, working near conveyer belts and putting chocolate products in packages. I guessed that this was the end of the line for Lovely Chocolates; the next step was shipping.
Looking around in the warehouse/workroom floor, I saw a door marked “Men.” I headed in that general direction, trying not to look out of place, and pushed open the door, finding a locker-room environment just inside. I walked through the locker area and found the stalls off to the left. Fortunately, nobody else was in there, and I picked the middle stall.
I entered the little stall, got situated, and while getting comfortable, wondered if I had done the right thing. I had just tattled on a high-level society girl who owned most of the stock of the company, who was a billionaire-in-the-making, and who would one day soon be able to buy and sell people like me. Was it the right thing to do, to tattle? If she ever heard that I had sullied her name, and found out who I was, she would be able to hire an army of lawyers to have me tied up in court for years. Was it the proper thing to do, to ask the Lovely board of directors for help?
As I sat there pondering the fate of Dr. Burke’s children, I heard the restroom door open. It opened again; perhaps the fellow who just entered turned around to leave. Then I heard it open a third, and fourth, and a fifth time. There must have been a shift change; the fellows were probably getting to their lockers.
Then something strange began to happen. Feet appeared at the bottom of my stall, the stall that I was in. I heard someone jiggle the lock on the stall door, and thought, “What the heck?” There were empty stalls on either side of me with no one in them; why doesn’t he use one of them? Can’t he see the door is shut? I said, “It’s occupied,” but heard no reply. Then I heard the doors swing open to the other stalls around me, and then saw even more feet appearing as people walked into these stalls. That wouldn’t be unusual, but weren’t stalls meant for one person at a time? It got even weirder when I began seeing feet appear all around the bottom of my stall, and when I say all around, I mean all around! There were people lining my stall! There must have been four people to my right and five people to my left and three people in front of me, and all the feet were situated so that the faces that belonged to the feet were against the outside walls of my stall! All the feet were there, with toes inside my stall, with even more feet behind them. I was surrounded!
One of them knocked on the door.
I thought I’d try to use humor. I said, “I’ll be through in a minute!” hoping they weren’t the security police. I began to wonder if I had wandered into the wrong restroom, one on the workroom floor? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be in there; maybe there were some strict regulations about non-workers in workfloor restrooms. Perhaps someone noticed that I hadn’t been wearing a hairnet?
A voice with a slight accent said, “Take your time, Mr. Smith. We haff all day.” I felt instant panic; who would know I’m in here? Who would follow me? Who would watch me enter a restroom, and further, who would want to speak to me here?
I said, “What’s going on? Who are you people?” I looked at the shoes lining the stall and noticed that they were all different styles of footwear. Some were black, shiny and expensive, some were rough, dirty, workroom boots, and some of the shoes were covered with white coverings, the kind that painters put on before entering a house, so they don’t dirty up any carpets or floors. Above the different footwear were blue jeans, white work pants, and pinstriped dress pants.
One pair of