I Saw an Otter!

I saw a river otter today. It was the first time in years that I’d seen one in person outside of the zoo or the aquarium – and it was so close! I was in awe when I realized what it was that had caught my eye in the cattails surrounding the drainage pond by my work. I was on my 10-minute break. We get 2 of these every day and they’re at specific times; mine are at 10:30 and 3:30. If we miss them for any reason (be it a work-related phone call or anything else) we don’t get to make them up and lose them for the day. The building where we work has no windows because it’s a converted warehouse. And I’ve been dealing with a lot of both work- and non-work-related depression and anxiety lately, so I treasure those two 10-minute breaks and use them to go soak up some sun and hopefully brighten my mood. They’ve really helped to break up my day, and my time spent wandering out by the unused field across the parking lot next to the drainage pond has given me lots of creative fodder.

There’s a 4 foot alligator living in this pond and I love watching him glide around when he’s not sunning. I stand in the field and pray for release and assistance. I walk around, looking at the grass and imagining what it would look like if there were no buildings. I think about if I had access to a holodeck (like in Star Trek: The Next Generation), I would have a program where I could be part of a family living in a log cabin in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Big Woods” or in her “Little House on the Prairie,” tribulations and all. I watch the anhinga dry his wings out after diving for food. I defer to the great blue heron and the pair of sandhill cranes and watch them from the opposite bank of the pond. Today, I saw a river otter.

The otter stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him. He turned toward me and started digging around in the dirt. Afraid he might be marking his territory or asserting his dominance, I walked wide around where he was and lost sight of him over the edge of the sloped bank of the pond. When I was a good distance from him, I reapproached. I didn’t see him, so I looked about and spotted him hurrying down close to the edge of the cattails in the direction I’d just come from. He was moving fast and was close to the far end of the pond, so I jogged at a far distance, just to keep an eye on him. He rounded the bend and disappeared into the woods. I was ecstatic as my break ended.

I came back into the building all smiles and told my friend the receptionist about the otter. She was happy, but had something to tell me: the boss had driven up while I was following the otter and she’d seen me. She came in and asked the receptionist what I was doing. The receptionist responded that I was on my break and the boss sniffed in her superior way and retreated to her office. When I heard that, my spirits sank and I felt that familiar crawling anxiety stealing up my limbs and into my chest.

Anything out of the ordinary or, heck, even ordinary things here at this office can turn into an awful debacle, usually kicked off by an email from our HR Manager. As I was working throughout the rest of the day, I kept checking my email for that inevitable missive that follows some unwitting employee’s unknown (and usually untold) violation of policy. I was truly expecting and dreading something like this:

Attention All Associates: 

When on your ten minute breaks you are not to loiter around the drainage pond. There is a dangerous alligator living in the pond and this Company is NOT responsible for any alligator-related injuries. For your own safety, we ask that you refrain from loitering around the drainage pond from this point forward. Any employee caught violating this no-pond policy from now on will be subject to reprimand and/or termination. 

Thank you,HR

Although it failed to appear in my inbox today, I’m still waiting for an email like that to come when I least expect it and I’m not crazy for thinking it. Many lesser things have prompted new policies, which get put into motion with an email very, very similar to the fake one above.

I’m also not crazy or too far off the mark for fearing this new element of control to pop up in our work lives because it’s happened many times before. Anything they don’t like, we get an email or get called into a meeting and a new policy is enacted with much frowning and disdain from our boss and the HR Manager, who quadruple-handedly dictate absolutely every little thing we do.

No lie. For example, pictures of family members on desks and stuck on billboards have been called “unauthorized.” We haven’t been told directly to get rid of them (yet), but I wouldn’t put it past them when they install the new desks, which is happening in the next couple of weeks.

Someone once had an uncomfortable chair. The employee brought it up to HR and HR said she couldn’t be bothered. The Graphics office had one employee in a two-person office, so one chair was empty. The employee asked the Graphics person if she could have the other chair and he was fine with it. The very next day when we came in, there was an email saying that employees were not to switch chairs without authorization. The chairs needed to be switched back or the unnamed employee would be reprimanded. She switched her chair back.

…and I’m not making it up.