Ben’s Diary: I Tried To Squeak Out A Fart At Work But It Was NOT Silent

Dear Diary,

I tried to squeak out a fart at work but it was NOT silent.

Okay little background here, Diary. My office recently relocated to a new building which meant we had to help move a bunch of office crap into our new space. Moving always BLOWS. There’s never a time when moving is fun. This past weekend I helped my dad finish moving out of our old house. I’ve moved around a lot in my life, living in twenty some houses, but this was the house I’d lived in the longest. It bounced back and forth in possession between my mom and my dad, but it was always in the family for the past 16 or so year. You’d think this would have been an emotional moment in my life, a heartfelt goodbye to childhood. No.  You’d think wrong. It was the absolute worst because MOVING ALWAYS BLOWS.

There is no bigger shrine to consumerism than digging through boxes of childhood bullshit, mounds of bobbleheads and comic books intertwined with Tech Deck finger skateboards and broken Furbies, all encapsulated in a snug cocoon of cat hair and time crust. Yeah, sure, there’s the occasional cool memento here and there, the collector’s tin my first pair of infant Nikes came in, the physical evidence that I was photogenic enough a baby to model for a baby food ad once upon a time (Yo, genetics, what the fuck happened there?), and the dope as fuck collection of now-throwback NBA jerseys that boy Ben rocked in the third grade. But most of what I found? COMPLETE CRAP. Like actual garbage.  We literally, without sorting or looking through it first, poured a kitchen junk drawer into a dresser drawer, put that dresser drawer back into the dresser, and moved that dresser. This happened. There was an original Palm Pilot in that drawer. We should have been burning that fucker down, not repacking it.

Moving is even worse when it’s not your stuff. Ever helped a friend move? Of course you have. And you hated every second of it. You don’t give a fuck about their stuff. IT’S THEIR STUFF. Who cares if you drop that stained glass lamp? It’s not yours. Hell, I had that problem loading up my dad’s shit into his aluminum dumpster pod, a portable garage for people who don’t drive trucks, and he’s my DAD. Like so what if I break this vase you bought in 1997? DO YOU REALLY CARE? Oh you do? My bad, I guess I’ll wrap it in this memory foam mattress pad and stamp the word FRAGILE in huge fucking block letters across that bitch. DON’T DROP THAT FUCKING VASE, MOVING COMPANY BROS.

If it sounds like I’m angry at my dad, I’m not. I’m angry at the concept of moving BECAUSE IT FUCKING BLOWS. If you think it sounds like I approached loading my dad’s lifetime collection of stuff with lackadaisical effort, you should have seen what I was like with my office’s crap. I threw away an entire file cabinet full of files without even looking at what was inside it. FUCK IT, NOT MY PROBLEM IF CARROL NEEDS THAT INVOICE NEXT THURSDAY LOLLZZZZZ. Why should I have to pack up office crap? Don’t we have discretionary funds to hire interns to do that bullshit? What is the moving company even doing if they’re not doing that? No, I’m not going to pack that cabinet up. Why? BECAUSE WE CAN BUY MORE HANGING FILES, THEY COST LIKE EIGHT CENTS EACH, BECKY, GOD.

As if it wasn’t shitty enough to be wasting working hours packing pens and copy paper, I found out that my new workspace would be in a hallway. Which is a really dope, non-disruptive place to put a person who does creative work for your company. No, there’s no way it’ll be distracting to have a parade of professional people stomping behind me all day in their loafers and business-casual clogs. THAT’S GREAT FOR FOCUSING. I love the sound of idle chit-chat obnoxious yelling from office to office by people who apparently don’t know about a little black magic device called the telephone. Hey, to be fair, it’s only been around since 1876! I’m sure you’ll get to learning how it works after you master the fucking carrier pigeon.

Because I’m in a high traffic area at work, people tend to congregate in the areas immediately adjacent to my workspace. Again, REALLY GREAT FOR FOCUSING ON THINGS LIKE TRYING TO NOT GET FIRED WRITING DIARY ENTRIES AT WORK, ER…  I MEAN WRITING AD COPY. I’ve tried every passive-aggressive thing I could think of to get them to move to a different area, angry leers alternated with fake warmth and over exaggerated smiles, not responding to questions or conversations, yelling out “FUCK” at random times throughout the day. Doesn’t help. I even did the “adult thing” and talked directly to my boss about it. They’re “working on a solution”, which is bureaucratic speak for “You’re a pawn, bro”.

In creative desperation, I hatched up one last cockamamie scheme to reclaim my area – Plan Pepé Le Pew. Plan Pepé Le Pew was built on three principles of gas production:

1.) Not caring what people think about me. In order to pull off Plan Pepé Le Pew, I was going to need to be that weird dude who forever stinks, always permeated in the musk of stale fart. It’s not enough to stink some of the time. I needed to stink all of the time. Which means not having a lot of friends at work. GOOD, WHO NEEDS ‘EM?

2.) Ignoring my lactose intolerance. In order to really stink up the space, Plan Pepé Le Pew required me to build up nauseating levels of intestinal pressure. That is NOT a difficult task if I’m consuming dairy. Cheese, butter, and milk – Oh my!

3.) Being discreet. Look, you can’t just openly let rip at work. You’ll get fired. This should be obvious. Plan Pepé Le Pew required me to be SILENT, BUT DEADLY.

So I chose a day to start, ate a lunch I would never, ever normally eat at work, and put Plan Pepé Le Pew into motion. I found a perfect moment to start leaking gas, a mid-afternoon lull met with a small group of co-workers discussing some upcoming weekend plans a few feet away. I pursed my butt cheeks and prepared to lay my first, of what was supposed to be many, skunk-bomb. Only problem? My first fart was NOT silent. At all. It was a fucking THUNDERCLAP, echoing up and down my hallway workspace.

Everyone turned and looked at me immediately, an awkward silence lingering in the air, wafting up like my fecal trumpet’s cloud of invisible gas. But then something strange happened. One co-worker spoke up. “Ugh, I hate that. These stupid new chairs. Mine does that whenever I sit down, too.”  And just like that the moment was over, the conversation resuming like nothing had happened at all. Plan Pepé Le Pew had failed. I had failed. I’m forever doomed to a noisy hallway. I’ve earned that fate.

So yeah, Diary, I tried to squeak out a fart at work but it was NOT silent and it’s all because MOVING BLOWS.

Later Diary!

Ben