Recap: The Tasmanian devil of our [Data Center] made everyone reading the story extremely uncomfortable.

Author’s Note: This story was set to go live on Saturday morning, but instead, I ended up going to the emergency room for corneal abrasions (bad batch of contacts). As such, today is the first day I can actually look at a computer screen without my eyes feeling like they’re on fire.

I apologize for the delay.

Part 1

$BT – Me

$ONTECH – Martian Maneater

$OPM – Operations Manager of [Data Center]

When we last left off, $ONTECH had done a remote hands order and assisted a customer. Said customer was less than enthused for the reason his card was not working.

$OPM – Walk me through this again.

I had been sitting in $OPM’s office for thirty minutes at this point. A stack of papers from an incident report filed by the customer, as well as affidavits from everyone involved were sitting neatly on his desk. I had already explained what I had found, but $OPM seemed rather incredulous.

$BT – So, the customer came into the Operations Center at [TIME]. He stated that he had worked with $ONTECH, who had installed a new card. However, the card was now not working.

$OPM - So what did you do?

$BT – I went to the cage with the customer to confirm that the new card was, in fact, not working.

$OPM – And what did you find?

$BT – Upon removing the card, we found an unknown substance on it.

$OPM – Except it wasn’t really unknown, was it?

$BT – I’m not sure I should-

$OPM – It was cookie dough. You found a large fucking chunk of raw cookie dough on the back of a [BRAND] card.

$OPM must have been pissed; he never cursed like that.

But it was true. I had found raw chocolate chip cookie dough on the back of the card.

$BT – That’s correct.

$OPM – Fuck.

There goes $OPM cursing again. His face was one of pure anger, as he continued typing his report. I could only imagine the things he was writing in it.

$BT – Am I free to go, sir?

$OPM – Sure, but I just have one last question. Did you see $ONTECH eating cookie dough at any time that evening?

I wasn’t going to lie.

$BT – No, sir. I did not see $ONTECH eating cookie dough that evening.

He looked at me, carefully parsing my words.

$OPM – Have you ever seen $ONTECH eating chocolate cookie dough?

Fuck. Most of my shift (and half of the other shift) despised $ONTECH because of his eating habits. Even if I had wanted to lie, they definitely wouldn’t have corroborated it.

$BT – Well, I’ve seen him eat it before-

$OPM – Thanks-you, $BT, that will be all.

A small grin formed at the corner of his lips, like a shark that had cornered its prey.

I hightailed it out of the [Data Center], hoping to avoid whatever shitstorm was headed our way.

A few days passed, and things seemed to have gotten back to normal. $ONTECH was on the other shift, so any information would have come secondhand. We came back from our normal, weekly furlough to find $ONTECH sitting in the Operations Center.

Eating.

$BT – Yo, $ONTECH you working with us tonight?

$ONTECH – No, (gulp) I’m just waiting on $OPM to call me into his office.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

After several awkward minutes of us typing on our computers and sorting through the job queue for the evening, and $ONTECH chomping away at his latest victim meal, $OPM stepped out of his office.

$OPM - $ONTECH, come in here please.

As he said this, he eyed the food in $ONTECH’s hands and squinted.

$OPM – Leave that out here or throw it away. You are not bringing that into my office.

$ONTECH – But $OMP-

$OPM – Trash it or put it away.

$ONTECH looked at us like a newborn puppy that had its mother’s nipple ripped from its mouth, then sullenly threw his burger into the trash, before stepping into $OPM’s office. For several minutes, things were quiet until an argument erupted. This went on for nearly an hour until $ONTECH stormed out of $OPM’s office and out of the [Data Center].

Time passed, and as the days went by the Operations Center began to acquire a distinct smell. Our Operations Center was connected to the break room, where the smell seemed to be emanating from. One evening, $OPM happened to be staying late.

$OPM - $BT, which locker is $ONTECH’s?

$BT – Locker [NUMBER].

I said this, before pointing to it.

$OPM said nothing as he leaned back into his office, grabbed a set of bolt cutters, and walked over to what was $ONTECH’s locker. He looked at the lock for a moment, and then proceeded to chop it with the bolt cutters. As he opened the door, a smell like no other hit us.

We all stood, curious to see what $OPM had found.

There, inside of $ONTECH’s former locker, sat what had to have been a shopping cart worth of old food. Inside sat rolls of salami, blocks of cheese, several packages of beef jerky, and even a container of trail mix, all of which had been rotting inside of that locker for several weeks. $OPM looked at us, looked at the locker, and shook his head before grabbing the trash can and shoveling it all away.

As he neared the end, he stopped to look at the latest discovery.

At the very back of the locker sat a sealed white and blue roll that said, “Cookie Dough.”

Epilogue: $ONTECH ended up unemployed for months after the incident. His [SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK] says he currently works at Wal-Mart (not kidding).

We ended up replacing the card for the customer. Luckily for us, the customer had a good sense of humor and actually retold that story many times to his coworkers.

Not long after $OPM cleared out the locker, we came into the [Data Center] to new signs on all of the doors:

“No food or drink of any kind allowed on the collocation floor or in company owned lockers.”