The Office Lurker Post

My company operates on three floors of an office building behind Tyson’s 2. There are other tenants in the building which I believe spans about 9 floors or so. ID badges are issued to everyone that grants access to the necessary levels and offices. Anyway, being sick and slovenly in the mornings last week led me to forget my ID badge on Wednesday. I made do all day by borrowing co-workers’ tags when I needed to hop floors or go on a break. However on one particular trip away from my desk I forgot to procure a card and found myself locked out. I began dialing a co-worker to come let me in, but as I did so someone came out of the elevator and walked towards our door. I hung up and politely waited for her to open the door. I explained that I was locked out and calling to get in but now I can just tag along with her. She smiled and seemed very obliging. I went back to work and thought nothing more of it.

An hour later an email came in to all tenants reporting the sighting of an ‘unidentified person lurking on one of the floors’. The note advised that we keep an eye on who is in our suites and to lock up all valuables. The incident with my key-card had long since left my mind, so I was actually taken aback by the email. I asked my cube-mate Eric if he got the email, and he told me that this sort of thing is rather common, and that he had known of people being robbed in the past in a similar fashion. The whole thing shocked me to be honest, and the use of ‘lurking’ on the email made me picture an evil man in a trench coat luring children into abandoned offices with candy. Then it dawned on me… what if I am the lurking creep? I had never seen the woman who let me into the office before, and while she seems obliging she might have just been polite to cover up her worries that I was some sort of evil-doer… There wasn’t any other instance reported during the rest of the week, so either the lurker moved on, or he’s still in hiding. Possibly behind the water cooler. Waiting for the perfect time to strike!...Or its just me and I need to lose the trench coat if I ever want to be accepted in the workplace.