The Bathroom is Ticking... You Can't Make This Up

Early in my tenure in one position, my boss walked into his office for our scheduled meeting. He had a serious look on his face when he said, "There is a ticking sound in the men's room." I smiled and said I'd take care of it. So I walked across the hall to the men's room and... yep!


There was a ticking sound coming from a stall. I peeked behind the door where a well-worn jean jacket hung with something weighing down one of the pockets. I know, I know. The right thing to do is to leave, evacuate, create a perimeter, and so on. The playbook was clearly never meant for this situation. After all, did we not learn from Fight Club that bombs no longer tick? Holywood would never lie to us, or at least maybe not Chuck Palahniuk. So I asked the employee with an adjacent office if they would not mind taking a break and spending a few minutes with their department's bullpen office down the hall. If it were a device it clearly would be limited, and there's need to be too cavalier. I locked the restroom  - master keys can be useful sometimes even if I had having them. And then headed to the computer lab.

The computer lab was open for public access and it held classes on resume building and other job search activities. I asked the attendant, in an "everyone listen to this" sort of whisper, if she could call the receptionist and have her page anyone that may have left anything in the men's room to return for it. Immediately, a young man stood up from his computer and approached, "I left my jacket in there," he said sounding a little embarrassed. I thanked the attendant for her help as the page was no longer needed, and asked the young man to walk with me.

As we walked the short distance I asked, "Is there any reason that your jacket might be ticking?" I asked. He answered, with a bit of resignation in his voice, "It's my alarm clock. I'm homeless and it's how I make it to class on time."

And that made a lot more sense than anything else I could think of, so we both retrieved the jacket (feeling a bit silly as I confirmed it was clock), and thanked him for his time. He apologized, clearly realizing what was happening, and I reassured him that it really was nothing to be concerned about.

I did have to answer the usual questions, was that the right thing to do, wasn't it too dangerous, and so on. But, the reality is simple. At some point someone is going to have to take that look, and maybe, just maybe, your organization has not really drawn the attention of such a vicious-minded person (and someone just forgot their alarm clock). This was just my introduction to the previously-incomprehensible range of issues such that organization would present to me.