Well, there are certain things that every administrative assistant learns to hate real quick. New employees and their paperwork. Ordering food for meetings. And the office fridge and its terrible, terrible smell. I returned to work 4 months ago to a fridge you could smell clear across the office. I stood my ground for 4 long months, refusing to offer to clean it. Then, one fateful day, when I had changed my face so that I was agreeable, I took up someone’s suggestion to clean the fridge on my last day of work before the long weekend. And this is how it went.
It was a cloudy, wet November day
The day we threw the food away
– Well, food is a rather generous term
As most of it was bacteria and germ –
We gathered four-strong in the stinky room
Huddled close like babes in a mother’s womb
One of us opened the great, white door
And the rest of us fell to the floor.
chorus
There comes a time in a woman’s life
When she must bow to external strife,
Must behave like someone’s stepford wife
And do the things she’s told to
Someone must pay if we want to play
That’s what I said to myself that day.
I took a bullet and it wasn’t a stray
And I didn’t have a medic to crawl to.
With a noseful of the noxious fumes
We all tried humming jaunty tunes
But it was useless – we were thwarted
By the stank the fridge exhorted.
Salad dressing, mouldy fruit,
Pickles, salmon, holy shoot!
Watch out, those baggies look real soggy,
I think that food used to be froggy. Or doggy.
Either way.
At the end, we scrubbed the racks,
Scraped off soy sauce and faced the facts:
Office folk are filthy pigs
Who don’t deserve their swanky digs
And if we four could have our way
We’d force others to smell what we smelled this day.
There comes a time in a woman’s life
When she must bow to external strife,
Must behave like someone’s stepford wife
And do the things she’s told to
Someone must pay if we want to play
That’s what I said to myself that day.
I took a bullet and it wasn’t a stray
And I didn’t have a medic to crawl to.
But virtue always goes rewarded
(and that’s sarcasm because I’m guarded)
Back at my desk I was cornered by
A crazy biddy who started to cry
You tossed my salad dressing! she said
As I stared, waiting, at her head
You saw my email, I had to say,
I heard you shouting earlier today
But it was fresh and good she whined
I don’t remember it, I replied
But next time label it with your name
And add the date, else it’s all the same.
She shook her fist and evil-eyed me
She moved in close and stood beside me
YOU TOSSED MY DRESSING AND YOU MUST PAY
I’M SORRY, I replied, NOW PLEASE GO AWAY.
That’s how it came to be 4:02
And how I came to be laughing, too
As I walked out of my office jail
Out through the door that always fails
Past the elevator – usually broken
And past several colleagues – no word spoken.
I popped in a piece of mint bubblegum
And flexed my feet to prepare to run.
She didn’t follow – they never do –
the crazies just want to bitch at you.
And bitch. And bitch. And bitch. And then
When you think they’re done? They bitch again!
I thought of her salads on my journey home
And how they will suck from now on
Without the wonderful dressings there
And I realized how much I really don’t care.
I cleaned your fridge that I don’t even use,
I emptied it of your forgotten refuse,
If your salad dressing had been so loved
You’d have come to rescue it – and I’d have lent you gloves.
There comes a time in a woman’s life
When she must bow to external strife.
Must behave like someone’s stepford wife
And do the things she’s told to.
Someone must pay if we want to play
That’s what I said to myself – and hey,
I cleaned your fridge and I called it a day
’cause I’ve got better things to come home to.