I sat down in my chair and reached for my water bottle. I was out of water. I stood up to go to the water machine, took a few steps out of my cube, and immediately, my heart sank and I stopped dead in my tracks. Oh no. This could not be happening.
I had just arrived in the office, and like any other day, pulled out my work shoes from the bag in my drawer, plopped them on the floor, and put them on. The left shoe felt different than usual. My socks must be crooked because there’s a little bump by my toes! Oh well. There’s no time to fix it now. I need to start working, I thought, as I sat down on my chair.
I started panicking. The playback of just a few seconds ago flashed before my eyes as I tried to contain my fear. It’s definitely not my socks. The bump was big, and it was soft. I had a hunch that it was what I thought it was, but I prayed that I was wrong.
I hurried back into my cube, put down my water bottle, and took my left foot out of my shoe as quickly as possible. As my foot slid out of my shoe, the bump scurried along the side of my foot. Trailing behind my foot was a big, huge, live cockroach.
“Oh no, there’s a cockroach in my shoe!” I exclaimed, as my two neighbors came over to see what all the commotion was about. The cockroach peeked out of my shoe, with its back legs on the insole and front legs resting on the edges of the collar. I stared in horror. That was the bump I felt. My fear became reality.
The three of us just stared at the cockroach, wondering how it got there, how long it was there, and how I managed to put my whole foot into the shoe and walk without squishing it. I put my left foot back into my tennis shoe while holding the right tennis shoe in my hand so that nothing else would crawl in. We couldn’t decide what to do with the cockroach, but the cockroach didn’t give us more time to think.
The cockroach suddenly charged at me. I screamed and jumped out of my cube. Two guys heard my cry and came to check out what was going on. With a cup and a big roll of paper, they tried trapping it, but the cockroach, clearly not suffering any injuries, ran back and forth between my cube and the cube next to me. It was a wild chase as I followed behind them helplessly with my mismatching shoes.
After a lot of moving things around and looking for it under drawers and chairs, the cockroach was finally captured. It was transported to the outdoors, far from our building, and I let out a sigh of relief. What an awful eventful Wednesday morning. I went through all my drawers to see if there were any other ones hiding. Nothing came out.
I wiped down my shoe with sanitizing wipes, then put on my tennis shoes again. I’ll wait until I have to wear my work shoes to put them on again. The rest of the office returned to normal, but something was still wrong. As I sat at my desk the rest of the day, I still felt like there was something in my left shoe.