A perfectly reasonable email exchange

Someone in my office is dying.  It's non-stop hacking and wheezing for a few straight weeks every fall and spring allergy season.  This man will not call out sick, shut his door, seek medical attention, etc...  My supervisors don't like to supervise.  It's an incredibly tense, passive-aggressive environment.  I had to say something:

From: Me

Sent: Yesterday
To: Dying coworker
Subject: the cough

Hey XXXX,

Could you please seek medical attention for your cough?  It sounds like it’s getting worse, and is getting to be a bit disruptive.  At the very least, I know there are a lot of over-the-counter cough suppressants out there that may give you at least some relief.  But that’s sounding serious enough to warrant a trip to a doctor or specialist.  We don’t want you coming down w/ pneumonia or something.

Thanks,

XXXXXX

I never should've bothered, judging by this incredible FU of a response.  For some background information, the 'very faint' listings he's describing are due to draft-quality printing that my organization imposed on everyone, and I never suggested reading glasses:

From: Dying coworker
Sent: Yesterday

To: Me

Cc: My supervisor
Subject: RE: the cough

Ask around.  I’ve had this cough for all 32 years I’ve worked here.  I took Mucinex when I came in today.  I sucked on cough drops on the bus and subway coming into work.

The cough is caused by seasonal allergies, dust mites, a small windpipe, and asthma, which combine to cause me to chock on mucus dripping down my throat.  Some years it turns into bronchitis for months at a time.  I have already had my flu shot.

If you do not want to hear it, have (supervisor) send me back down to the far side of the division’s space. The people on that end are quite used to hearing this cough year after year.  Or get a pair of ear plugs.  I did buy the reading glasses you suggested when I could not read your very, very faint listings this year.

Ok, so clearly, just forget reasoning with this guy.  Better to suffer silently instead of riling up the bear and getting my supervisor involved.  Because the dying asshole isn't the problem with the office, it's the lone guy willing to ask why the hell it has to be this way.  I didn't bother responding, in any case.  Didn't matter, because an hour later I got this:

From: Dying coworker
Sent: Yesterday
To: My supervisor; His supervisor
Cc: My supervisor's supervisor; Her supervisor; Me
Subject: Please read the last two lines of my current email, if you do not want to read the whole thing. Follow upFW: the cough

Evidentially my cough is bad enough to be causing general concern, so I am seeking some advice.

Last Friday I had lost my desk keys along with my house/car keys I so I couldn’t get to my Claritin or CVX allergy pills.  I went down to the nurses office.  She gave me some Sucrets and something else to suppress my cough.

I knew I did not have any more MucinexDM at work, so I got some more over the weekend.  The MucinexDM is what my doctor told me to take to try to contain the phlegm and nasal drip so that it would not cause the congestion to spread to my chest and then lead to bronchitis.  I use Claritin when my runny nose from that allergies gets worse than normal, and sometimes I use Afrin to unclog my nose to sleep at night.  I have a good stock of Halls with me year round.  The sleep apnea machine then keeps my sinuses clear through the night because it is like a wind tunnel blowing through a straw.

I have tried asthma inhalers, but they are not effective enough on me to be useful.  I have to go in to the doctor’s office and breath through the nebulizer, which contains about the same stuff as the inhaler, but much, much more of it gets down into my lungs.

XXXXXX mentioned several years ago that Federal employees are not allowed to close their office doors all day long.  That is why I have not closed my door. Is this still true?  If I could close my office door, then my coughing would be very muted in the adjoining hallway and offices.

What do you think I should do?

=|

Desiderata

Today wasn't the best day of my life.

I received a 2010 property tax bill with a $25 late fee from a city I fled 2 years ago and have been trying to put out of mind ever since.  My several documented interactions with them over the past year, trying to prove I no longer reside in their fine city, have apparently been unproductive.  Local governments either don't recognize or, as I suspect is more likely the case, deeply appreciate the sadistic nature of having non-residents prove a negative.

To boot, the dominant cable company in my area, whose name begins with 'Co', but doesn't end in 'mcast', fined me because my last payment was never processed.  By them.  Oh! I made the payment 10 days early, with the usual bank account, and I can provide the receipt to any doubters.  However their online payment center wasn't working, and still isn't by the way, and they were never able to process it.  Instead of informing me of this when they realized it, still well before the bill due date, they decided to send me a $50 late fee in my next bill, a full month later.  To this day, they have not removed the late fee, nor fixed their online payment center.

So after a day spent waiting for and finally speaking with representatives of these municipalities and corporations, I called my mother to lament.  Out of her wisdom she reminded me of the poem Desiderata, encouraging me to 'go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.'  She beseeched me to find the humor in these situations, to laugh at the inanity of daily life in the city, to paste my problems onto the day's collage and walk away, confident that I had at least learned something about myself from these interactions.  After all, these bureaucrats couldn't care less if our conversations were draining me of my very life force.

My mother is very wise, and has been through unbelievable hardships for someone only now turning 50.  I cherish her friendship and encouragement, as biased as it may be.  And her advice is all well and good.  Unfortunately, it begins to fall apart on any day in which a dirty Metro pigeon flies directly into your face.

You spend your day worried that maybe you're just sliding into paranoia and delusion.  You reel back in horror from your own thoughts, that maybe these faceless bureaucrats are in cahoots, guided by some malevolent force whose only goal is to destroy your mind very, very slowly.  And then you come face to face with a pigeon.

This isn't paranoia.  This is my life.  When you've been through that, you realize that the author of Desiderata would've serve us all so much more had he simply included a stanza on pigeon encounters.  I desire 2 things from my interaction with that bird.  1) That someone witnessed the encounter and was enriched by the experience, and 2) that the pigeon picked up some human disease it never developed an immunity to and spreads it to all his Metro friends.

I will say, I've already come to appreciate the incident, because it was a catalyst.  When that hobo bird's wing batted against my open mouth and I tasted the bum wretch he had been scratching through moments earlier, I realized that something had to give.  Someone needed to hear this story.  If only that my life would serve as an observational experiment, and a warning, to any who might read of it.

I'm hoping this blog will cover that experiment, the arrest, and most of the trial.

Edit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDJsgtoizj8

Thanks, Mom.  Glad you're still laughing.