Workplace Mystery #208: The Money Changers

It happens every day.

This phenomena, it comes without warning, without  reason.

People go to work, not to work but to spend, to sell, to barter, or trade.

Money changes hands and goods are exchanged, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef, Avon, Girl Scout cookies, Sex toys, Chocolates, Percocets, Longaberger Baskets, Cigarettes…

Sometimes they even take your money and you get nothing in return.

“Hey we need another 10 dollars for the Pick 6 pool.”

“So-and-so in billing just had hip surgery, will you give me ten dollars for flowers and a card?”

“That girl with the blonde hair at the front desk, well her father-in-law’s brother just died and we need you to chip in fifteen dollars for flowers and a trip to the spa.”

“Those two girls that started last month are pregnant and we are throwing a baby shower, it’s twenty  dollars per girl to chip in on strollers.”

“It’s Bill’s birthday. You know him, he’s the big guy in the mail room, chip in five dollars with us?”

There is  something every week. It starts out with birthdays, deaths, surgeries, farewells, baby showers and bosses days. Then it turns into  fund campaigns for the lady in transcription whose old  neighbor needs money to move back from Florida to get out of her abusive 35 year marriage, and homeless people who need roller blades and portable cd players in Texas, and kids with hare lips from pakistan  who were born without eyelids and intestines.

True story.

The collection that cannot be topped.

It was for the 300 lb premenopausal woman with a pituitary tumor and a full black beard whose sixteen week pregnancy ended in a puddle in a bathroom stall at work.  She called from the hospital hours after the expulsion.

“It was a little boy, they took his fingerprints and put a little blue hat on him. They gave me a little teddy bear and took his picture for me. Hey, can you lock up my lab coat? I left five dollars in the pocket. I don’t think I will be in tomorrow.”

A hat?

I saw the picture of  this thing with the hat. It looked like a miniature maroon version of those froggy pig faced people from the twilight zone. They really did put a hat on it, a half cooked blood clot with limbs and a microscopic penis, and  they took it’s picture.

What do you do with that? A picture of a sixteen week old hat wearing fetus that shouldn’t have ever seen the light of day. I guess you put it on the mantle with all the other family photos?  When the other fully cooked kids friends come over to play they can say, “yeah, that’s my half cooked brother Tommy. He’s walking with Jesus now, wearing a hat to keep his little underdeveloped brain warm.”