The gas we pass.

Life in cubicles, part two. 

Everyone farts.  We all know that.  But why do men think it is okay to fart in their cubicles?  I will never understand why most men think that farting at the office, let alone the cubicle situated right next to yours, will go unnoticed.  Maybe the problem is that some men behave at work just like they would at home (huge discussion for another day and another diary).   I did some searching for a scientific study that would shed some light on this crazy phenomenon but I wasn't successful.  What I do know is that most men do it; most women don't.   Perhaps the gas in a cubicle zone has become so pervasive that it now qualifies as a "hazard to your health" from flatulent exposure.

I went to work for one company that was in the  middle of an office re-location.  The temporary offices were situated in a large strip center, complete with a center section of cubicles.  I was assigned a seat in a cubicle right next to the temporary co-ed bathroom.  Talk about gas!  I was exposed to gas from colleagues going in, colleagues coming out, and, the scent of nose-hair-burning gases after the bathroom was used.  The only word that comes to mind to adequately describe this scenario is nauseating.  I lasted there one week.  Not just in the cubicle but in the job.  I resigned; I couldn't take it anymore.

Years later I encountered some bad boys in a new cubicle farm.  You could always tell when they had been out drinking the night before; the air was filled with their escapades.  Hmmm...is that Jack Daniels I smell?  Hard liquor and the inner workings of the male digestive system is not a recipe that produces anything palatable.  So toxic were those fumes that they could have been bottled and used as some type of repellant!  The women who sat near the gas guys would burn candles at their desks to get through the day.  I lived in fear that if I happened to walk by them right after they had just let-one-fly that the smell would cling to my hair or my clothes.  Complaints were made to management; their pleas were largely ignored.  What to do.

What have you smelled in the confines of your cubicle?

Comments

[Gasman]

Sorry dear, but I fart in my cubicle all day, every day. I can't help it. I'm a farter, I always have been, and I imagine I always will be. I can't be getting up to go the head every time I need to unleash some methane. It's just not gonna happen. Nor can I hold it in, which would be enormously painful. ...Working in an office requires dealing with all kinds of things we don't like. That's why it's the office, and not your private living room. Now, if some dude comes to your house, sits on your couch, and then lets a smelly one rip, then you have good reason to bitch and moan. But in the office, it's every man, and every woman, for him and herself. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. I do what I have to do to get through the day. I fart. Deal with it. Hear my farts, you peasant, hear them in all their reverberating glory and revel in the nectar that is my pungent, rancid gas.