My work is trying to kill me

Or, more accurately, the facilities staff seems to be trying to kill me. You may think me crazy (you may have already thought me crazy), but I'm convinced that it is true. They're out to get me, and there's no stopping this cabal of cleaners. The attack is two-pronged, one blunt and one more subtle. The first, and most obvious, attempt on my life is through insidious use of the A/C system: they're trying to freeze me solid!

Now, you may think this delusional paranoia on the part of ol' Euph. To be honest, I thought nothing of it at first. With large buildings, you just have to run the A/C year-round. Even in the winter, there is so much heat generated from people and computers and other items that requires some degree of cooling of the building. So, when it was regularly 55^oF at my desk and in my lab, I just figured they were having trouble getting good control of the system. But that was from the winter of 2003: the sub-60 temps are maintained spring, summer, fall, and winter and I am left in a constant state of mild hypothermia. The insidious part is that it's not that cold in other labs or at other people's cubicles. They're out to get me!

And now, just this week, they have launched the second prong of their evil scheme. It started so innocently, when they changed the air fresheners in the bathrooms around the building. A seemingly normal act, but with murderous intent! This scent, perhaps best described as "powder fresh", is like kryptonite to me. They know, as I've mentioned here before, that scents and perfumes cause an allergic reaction. So now, when I innocently enter the restroom, within seconds I:

• feel my throat constricting
• my sinuses start to swell, so that I feel they might just squeeze out my nostril at any moment
• feel the onset of a migraine headache
• my head gets a little fuzzy, like being a little drunk but not fun at all

I am now left with a terrible decision. Do I brave the maddening redolence of the bathroom? Or, do I simply not go all day long? There is the choice: death through anaphylactic shock or death through renal failure. I'm certainly doomed. Farewell, cruel world, thou hast wounded me too much.

So, if you don't hear from me for a while, you will know that flowers need to be sent to Mrs. Euphrony and to look for the obituary of a Houston rheologist whose passing could be described only as untimely and inexplicable.

Tags: Paranoia, Allergies, Air Fresheners, Air Conditioning, Freezing, Work, Melodramatic, Sarcasm