As the Polygon Turns (Episode 25): Why Bother?

I’d like to report that last week was another busy, busy week at the Polygon.

So, I will: last week was another busy week at the Polygon.

Amidst the flurry of all of things industrious, I discerned or at least imagined a theme to some of the week’s adventures: BOTHER. One event was a fairly severe bother, on order of a coup, the second a minor comeuppance, and the third, basically just an indecency.

FIRST: Tri-Ark Take Over
Tri-Ark quietly but officially took over trash collection in our sector. And Bill and I didn’t get quite the reaction we expected out of Ishmael.

You see, on Tuesday, the multi-lingual Tri-Ark ladies stopped Slim and Bill in the hallway just outside out office and asked them if our trash had been taken care of. Ishmael had already come, and my two compadres tried to make it clear to the ladies that we already had a perfectly good trash man, capable and punctual (lately, anyway).

Wednesday, however, a mousey Tri-Ark lady came ringing our doorbell at 11:30 AM. Pretty early for trash call, we thought. Upon heaving herself and her giant trashcanonwheels through our behemoth door, she just stood there. Barely taller than the receptacle she carted, she simply chirped: “Trash? Trash? Trash?”

“Yep, we’ve got trash… here,” either Bill or I said (I get us confused sometimes) as we put our cans out flush with the end of our cubicle row. She eventually got the picture and came over to collect what little trash we had. Pretty early for trash call!

Before long she had collected the other two cans worth and courageously hoisted our door open to go on her way, conducting her unwitting land grab operation in the larger campaign known to us as The Trash War.

Not much later, our doorbell rang again, and just before we pushed the button to unlock the door, Bill and I both hollered for all the world to hear (which actually only included one other person):
“Ohhhhh, man… I’ll bet this is Ishmael”
“He is going to be fuhr-ree-yus…!”

“Hi, Ishmael! …Somebody already came to collect our trash.”
“Whah? You no have tradsh?”
“No… uh… who were they… Tri-Ark. Yeah, Tri-Ark. They already came by… about 45 minutes ago.”
“Whoo?”
“Yeah, Tri-Ark. Do you want me to call your supervisor so we can straighten this out?” Bill – ever Mr. Nice Guy – offered. And he did.

Well, the lady at the other end of the phone in very few words told Bill to relay to Ishmael that she had another route for him.

Bill and I, we were a little sad, actually… sort of. I mean this was our trash guy after all: the man who saved us from smelling banana peels and being overcome by lunch wrappers. The importance of his role and our extreme gratitude should not be downplayed.

We asked Ishmael if maybe he would come back and visit sometime – you know, just to say ‘hello,’ just so we could hear his verbal tirade about Bill not coming to work (which he actually rarely missed) or rail about the Redskins, smell his musky cologne, and watch him manhandle an ill-fitting plastic bag around a wastepaper basket with the grace and precision of a Marine with his rifle.

With merely a chuckle, Ishmael left quietly with a slightly bowed head.
Sigh. Truly, the end of an era.


SECOND: Sour Cleaner
At the risk of further demystifying the great American icon that is the Polygon, I will tell you that this place, like Triangle, NJ, Washington Square, Dupont Circle, and all other great places named after shapes is actually a slice of America, just like anywhere else. We have a post office, a shoe shine, a Starbucks, a Dunkin, a Popeye's, a florist, and just about any other retail store you can imagine – we just got a Best Buy! And, oh yes, our dry cleaning shop is run by Korean-Americans. It’s great! They do a fantastic job.

On Thursday, I went to pick up my dry-cleaning, and the woman who usually works the counter was perched upon her usual stool, legs crossed, with her usual sour-puss look on her face – not because she was sour; that’s just her look. Or so I thought.

This day, she actually was sour -- and with good reason.

Two men were standing immediately in front of her counter, yapping like they were at their goddamn high school reunion, just yak yak yaking away, oblivious… totally Oh-blivious to the world going on around them. I approached the counter and awkwardly reached around them to turn in my slip to get my dry-cleaning. Sour-puss stool-percher huffily waited on me at the opposite register, about five feet away from the garrulous gentlemen.

I smiled, thanked her, paid my seven oh five, and she either must have caught my sidelong glances inquiring “W-T-F is up with them?” or was just at the end of her wit’s end rope. As she gave me my change, she made sock puppet gestures with her hands and said “Tir-tee minutes… tir-tee minutes they talk like that! Grrrrrrr-uh!”

For some reason I tried to apologize for them, if only because I was wearing the same color uniform, making me somehow complicit. And I sidled away, back down to my little cave, away from this bother.


THIRD: Hamming the Pine
Now this last bother is not something that happened to me personally, but rather was relayed to me by my cohort Bill during one of his many adventures in the Polygon Athletic Center. Some creative and idle PowerPoint Ranger has captured similar indecencies in the men’s locker in stick figure cartoon form which I am afraid I lack the technology to attach, but I would happily send to anyone who sends me his/her email address. I am warning you. They are FUNNY!! Our absolute favorite is called “Hamming the Pine.” …picture an innocent bench being smothered by someone’s ham hock.

The one that is not there, however, is one that Bill was subjected to last week. As he was trying to dry his hands, he nearly groped a bottomless dude blow-drying his hair with the hand dryer. I suppose I don’t need to mention that these dryers are installed at hand/waist - not at neck/head - level. Ewwwwwww!

After relaying this story to me, he asked if we have similar shenanigans in the women’s locker room.

“We most certainly do NOT.” I told him. “We have couches, big roomy lockers, perfumed toilets—”

“And tickle fights in every corner,” he chimed in. Exactly.

“So you’ve been there?” Hmmm. I didn’t have to explain a thing -- which was, refreshingly, no bother at all.