My office building is cursed

Two years ago, a water main burst across the street (or so I'm told...I was not working there at the time), flooding the lobby and forcing the building to close for several days.

Then, last year, as some of you who know me well may recall, it rather inconveiently caught fire, and we were all forced to escape through stairwells filled with thick, acrid black smoke. Fifteen stories. Well, those of us who didn't have to break a window and climb out onto the roof of the parking garage before being rescued by a some firemen with a very tall ladder. It was a highly stressful experience for all involved, and I don't think anyone was especially upset when the building remained closed for more than two months.

This morning, I arrived in the lobby, trying in vain to close my umbrella without splashing espresso onto my Marc Jacobs peacoat or dropping my iPod onto the floor, only to be pulled aside by one of the security guys, who breathlessly asked, "Did you check your email yet this morning?" Rather a silly question, I think, considering I can't come up with any reason why I'd check my email outside of the office unless for some reason I wasn't going into the office, which I obviously was given that I was there. My first thought was, 'oh no, I've been fired for some obscure breach of the terms of my employment and security has been instructed not to let me upstairs.' I scanned through a quick mental laundry list of potential indiscretions - I use a proxy server to access blocked websites, I occasionally call my mom long-distance on my work phone, I've been writing a book on company time, I sometimes lock myself in the marketing closet and do yoga. Nothing so bad.

"No." I replied as my hot beverage dribbled onto the tender skin betwen my thumb and forefinger, burning me mildly in the process.

"Oh. Well. A water main broke on the 17th floor and the damage goes all the way down to 13. So just call us if you have any problems." He smiled conciliatorially.

Wonderful. Yesterday, I didn't even know that there was a 17th floor, and today not only does it exist but it features a malfunctioning water main. I took the elevator up to 15, where I sit, and was instantaneously greeted by a smell that could best be described as a combination of musty basement and swamp. Delightful. The damage was confined to one side of the building, which naturally happened to be my side, but the waterlogged portion of carpet stopped just short of my cubicle so I suppose I can count myself among the unaffected, although I'm not sure my respiratory system would agree.

All in all, only three offices were damaged. However - and, I think, somewhat hilariously - they were the offices of the CEO, the CIO, and the COO. All of whom are normally only in the office a week or two each month; all of whom concidentally happened to be in the office this week. But my amusement at the irony of the sitation was cut short when I realized that the executive assistant had taken a personal day, and, because I am for some reason the human resource of choice for C-level executives when their assistant is out despite the fact that I no longer fall under the category of administrative staff, I got the distinct pleasure of moving all the industry awards and desk accoutrements and 25-pound bronze statues of Shiva the Hindu god of destruction into an empty cube so the place could be fumigated. Buckets of fun, let me tell you.

All day long, I kept wanting to make a joke about how the building must be built on an ancient Indian burial ground, but in my office, that joke would only be met by blank stares of "quoi?" Or whatever quoi's equivalent is in Hindi.

Thank God it's Friday.