Ken's Newsletter

Laughs about dead rat in office keep friendship alive for 30 years

Rats are ugly, smart creatures that get a bad name. They got blamed for spreading the bubonic plague in Europe during the Middle Ages, but historians later concluded people were at fault because of unsanitary conditions.

Movies about World War I, including 1917, depict rats devouring dead soldiers. However, historical accounts indicate soldiers in the trenches kept some rats as pets and ate other rats.

Cast members on the first season of the reality TV show Survivor ate rats. Nixon henchman G. Gordon Liddy, who lived to age 90, overcame his childhood fear of rats by cooking and eating one.

I have my own rat story. Thirty years ago while I worked at a trade publishing company near Palm Springs, I detected a putrid smell on the other side of my cubicle. Mildred (not her real name) uttered disgust upon learning the stink came from a rat that succumbed under her desk. Armed with disposable gloves or other sanitary protection, the HR manager came to the rescue and gave the rodent a Christian burial.

I laughed quietly during the episode. Mildred was the Co-Worker from Hell who defied my instructions on editing copy for the trade magazines and sent me nasty messages through the company’s internal email system. She sought to curry favor with a new co-worker, Robert, even offering to introduce him to a single woman who belonged to her church.

Robert was an earnest man who had been out of work for a year during the oil bust in Oklahoma and started work at the job in April 1995. His father’s retirement nearby apparently was a factor that led him to relocate to the Coachella Valley. Robert had no previous writing experience, but he brought expertise in the horticultural industry. By contrast, I came from a newspaper background but had little interest and knowledge of the green industry. I worked closely with Robert, helping to cultivate his writing skills. I had no authority. He could say, “I disagree with you.”

I had a strange feeling about the company from the start when I applied for a job there a year earlier. In a period of a few weeks for the selection process, the pay dropped from $20,000 to $18,000 a year.

I didn’t get hired for that job, but another position came up and I accepted it despite having misgivings. I had wanted to leave a specialty weekly newspaper 55 miles away that didn’t pay benefits. I was living with my father at the time and the new job enabled me to save on gasoline and wear and tear on my car.

It didn’t take long for me to sense the work environment was strange, and I became more certain after my boss and a co-worker – a previous employee of the year – resigned. Harriet (not her real name), who was bug-eyed, had a hoarse voice and made faces at me, was promoted and became the new boss. After I complained about a nasty message from Mildred, Harriet, an alcoholic, suggested that Mildred and I get drunk together.

Mildred had Harriet’s ear. Nearly seven months after I started, Harriet put me on a monthlong probation notice. That turned out to be a ploy that management used. Instead of the standard HR practice of giving three warnings in writing, the company fired staff when the one-month probationary period ended.

On my final day, Harriet called me into her office. “I kind of like you,” she said. She said I wasn’t “the right fit” and thought a recent college graduate would be a better candidate for the copy editor job. I was a few days short of my 40^th birthday. The company advertised the job with a pay cut of $2,000 a year.

I left quietly, and Robert called me up to offer his condolences. He told me Mildred got me fired. He said she sent him emails in which she used obscene words in Spanish to describe me and gloated that my departure was “the happiest day in my life.”

Robert told Mildred that he had spoken to me. She immediately complained to Harriet. I told my father about the exchange. Incredulous, he asked, “What is this? The Gestapo?”

Robert and I are only a year apart and we are very different, but we became friends. After I left, he said he told Mildred that I put the rat under her desk; she apparently believed him. She wasn’t amused when he shared a Dilbert comic strip that showed the character Ratbert.

A devout Southern Baptist, Robert wasn’t in his comfort zone in the hedonistic culture of Palm Springs. He is now living in Alabama but wants to return to Oklahoma. He has fond memories of growing up in the Sooner State and graduating from Oklahoma State University. His former email address contained the letters “osu” and the number for the street address of his late mother’s house.

We went our separate ways, but one bizarre thing keeps the friendship alive: the dead rat story. We regularly forward stories having to do with rats and chuckle at Mildred’s expense.

I didn’t stay in touch with anyone else from the company, and Robert has nothing to do with them. Mildred left as well. She likely played a modern-day Pied Piper by taking the rats with her. However, the rats might get the last laugh. They survived the dinosaurs and might outlive us if a nuclear apocalypse were to occur.