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How a poor choice of office furniture led to borderline mail fraud.
In my mid-twenties I worked for an early-stage tech startup in New York City. Our office was a rundown loft that made most frat houses look like luxury hotels. The elevator often got stuck, light fixtures would randomly fall from the ceiling, cracked windows were fixed with duct tape, and the 65-person Sales team shared two very overworked toilets between the whole group.
When Eric, our newly-hired Head of Business Development, joined the company with actual corporate experience on his resume, it must have been a bit of a culture shock for him. Nevertheless, he survived his first turbulent elevator ride, dodged the dangling electrical wires, and put a picture of his kids on the windowsill to cover up the damaged glass. But it was another interior decorating decision that led to Eric becoming my unwitting pen pal.
In an attempt to add a little class to the joint, Eric brought in a few pieces of office furniture and accessories from his previous stint in the corporate world. Among them was a hanging letter holder that he affixed to the wall outside of his office, presumably expecting a constant inflow of important paperwork, memorandums, and the like. What he got instead was a bunch of confused looks from the rest of the workforce, most of whom had graduated college mere months ago and were wholly unfamiliar with the concept of interoffice mail.
Concerned that the empty letter holder would discourage Eric from succeeding in his new role, I took it upon myself to write to him.
Dear Eric, Greetings and salutations, fellow inhabitant of this liminal space we call “the office”. As your designated pen pal, it is my distinct pleasure to extend to you a warm, yet cautionary welcome. First and foremost, let me assure you that the occasional plumbing anomaly or lingering trash smell is nothing to fret about. Just be sure not to approach the panini maker with any metal objects on your person. My Uncle Jack warned me that calling them paninis instead of sandwiches would make me less of a man — it’s a shame he said nothing about the electrical burns. Anyway, our esteemed superintendent has become quite adept at extinguishing fires without disrupting anyone’s lunch break. His name is Walt. I’m sure you’ll meet him on your own, but bring a flashlight if you intend to seek him out. The stairwell where he dwells can become thick with marijuana smoke and parts of the railing were disassembled during a game of “American Gladiators” at our last holiday party. That reminds me, what is your favorite athletic competition? Please let me know in your next letter. Mine is the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Uncle Jack took me and my cousin Colin out to Coney Island to see it once, but Colin is a vegan and said it was barbaric. That really made Uncle Jack mad because there’s nothing more American than a hot dog. When Colin explained that actually, the frankfurter has German origins but has been co-opted by unbridled American exceptionalism, Uncle Jack flew into a rage and left us to fend for ourselves. That night, we had a few odd encounters with mermaids, made stranger by the bag of mushrooms Colin was snacking on, but ultimately we survived one heck of an Independence Day and got an epic selfie with Joey Chestnut. Land of the free, am I right? So anyway, welcome to this delightful, yet perplexing, adventure we call work. Embrace the clutter, relish the complete lack of supervision, and be prepared to wait in long lines for the restroom, especially if the Customer Success team has been out to Happy Hour the night before. I wish you tremendous success in your new role and eagerly await your correspondence. As a wise man once said, “I’d rather be rich than stupid,” and in this place, Eric, you have the opportunity to be both. Welcome to the Thunderdome, Your Office Pen Pal
I expected some kind of reaction. Maybe a chuckle, maybe a groan. But I got nothing.
Eric, displaying unrivaled patience and professionalism, never wrote back.
I'm not sure why, but for me it became a battle of wills. My efforts had to provoke at least a smile or an eye roll. Even a lecture about wasting time and corporate resources would have been appreciated. But Eric's poise (or general lack of interest) prevailed. So naturally, I had to keep writing to him for 18 long months, during which the urgency of my letters kept escalating.
They got increasingly more detailed about my fictional family. I described a bizarre psychedelic journey taken by Cousin Colin on his way to becoming a spiritual shaman. I lamented that Uncle Jack’s declining sanity frequently caused me to spend nights in the office. I insisted that I saw a ghost burning the midnight oil in front of Eric’s laptop.
Growing more determined to connect with Eric on a personal level, I attempted to guess his middle name by sending him dozens of handwritten guesses. No reply. I was devolving into mania.
I wrote him this iconic piece of political literature in late January of 2017.
Dear Eric Eugene (?), Oh boy, where do I even start? So much has happened since my last letter. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, but I spent the fall on the campaign trail with President Trump. Not because of my political views or anything, but because Uncle Jack lost the house in a three-team AFL parlay. I came here to sleep at my desk, but the lights in your office kept flickering and the stapler levitated across the Sales floor and hit me square in the forehead. I was so freaked out that I ran down the stairs, tripped over Walt’s water pipe, and shattered it. He’s going to be pretty upset. Anyway, later that night I crawled into the cargo hold of a coach bus in Midtown to finally catch some z’s. I had restless dreams all night, fueled by visions of your office poltergeist and fumes from Walt’s broken paraphernalia. In them, Billy Bush and I were telling dirty jokes in the New Orleans Voodoo locker room. When I woke up, we were at a rally in West Virginia. A woman named Mrs. Conway was in the cargo hold with me. She was plunging out the septic tank, which had somehow gotten clogged up with a strange collection of IRS envelopes and polaroid pictures of Vladimir Putin. She kept muttering something about “draining the swamp” but I couldn’t figure out what she meant. I got a little scared that Mrs. Conway would get angry with me for sneaking onto the bus, but all of a sudden Chris Christie clogged up the swamp again. Everyone was gagging and had tears in their eyes, so I slipped away without getting caught. What an adventure! So after all that, Uncle Jack sobered up and took me down to D.C. for the inauguration as an apology. As luck would have it, we had almost the whole mall to ourselves! It was basically just us and the bassist for 3 Doors Down. His name is Chet. Anyway, we got up really close and got to hear the president read a list of everything wrong with today’s society and why he’s the only one who can fix it. Chet and my uncle got really fired up and started chanting, “Lock her up!” I’m not totally sure who they were chanting about though, because I didn’t see any women around. The next day, the Amtrak station was very crowded on the way home, but in all the chaos I saw something bright red and familiar out of the corner of my eye. I initially thought it was one of those hats from back in the cargo hold, but it was actually my Cousin Colin’s eyes squinting at us! He was carrying a sign that said “her body, her choice” in one hand and a tray of brownies in the other. He accused Uncle Jack of supporting facism. Uncle Jack accused him of being a snowflake coastal elite. I tried to calm them down by talking about 3 Doors Down, but that just seemed to make them both even angrier! The two of them wrestled until Mrs. Conway appeared, floating ominously above the ground. Her eyes were rolling back in her head as she muttered all kinds of incantations and spells. Just as I began to wonder how the demonic ghost from your office could have followed us to Washington, the floor tiles split at the seams and flames began to rise from the depths beneath the nation’s capital. A tuft of billowy blonde hair rose from the ashes, followed quickly by a pair of furious orange eyes. It was the president himself, here to rid us of the carnage! He began mashing his fangs and swiping wildly with his tyrannosaurus claws. Colin’s reflexes were sluggish, his eyesight impaired. He was a sitting duck! The monster summoned by Kelly the Sorcerer violently ripped my cousin limb from limb in a matter of seconds. “Oh my god, you killed Colin,” I shouted. “Avada kedavra,” Kelly the Sorcerer exclaimed. “Fake news!” screamed Mr. Spicer. “Kryptonite,” sang Chet. “Own the libs!” demanded Uncle Jack. “Sad,” tweeted Trump. And that, Eric, is the story of the day we made America great again. I’m curious to hear your evaluation of the first 100 days of the Trump presidency in your next letter. What particular nuances of his foreign policy do you find compelling and why? Your last message seems to have gotten lost in the mail. Your pen pal, Deplorable Matt
Heartbroken that my presidential recollections had still not provoked a response, I decided to step up my game. Did you know that you don’t need to know someone’s middle name in order to look up their home address in the state of Connecticut’s property records? I made a quick stop at the post office during my lunch break to buy a book of stamps and started sending my correspondence through the mail.
After a half dozen more trips to USPS, I was really running out of time to shatter Eric's stoic demeanor. I had recently accepted a new job at another ridiculous startup with a (slightly) less dilapidated office space, and I really wanted to crack him before I left.
During my last week with the company, I threw caution to the wind, embraced my vulnerability, and voiced my bittersweet emotions about departing in one final letter.
Dear Eric Xavier(?) Francis(??) Gabriel(???) Any hints(?!?), It is with great sadness that I write you my final letter as your dedicated office pen pal. But I would be remiss if I didn’t start off with a quick expression of appreciation. Not since Caprese Carl left Engineering have I seen someone so aptly navigate the perils of the panini press. If it doesn’t work out here, you have a bright future on George Foreman’s Business Development team. As I look forward to a new chapter in my career, I thought I’d tell you a bit about my first job. The year was 2004 and I was hired by Olympia Sports to sell soccer cleats, fold “Life is Good” t-shirts, and hang up jock straps on end cap displays. Uncle Jack was ecstatic. He had teamed up with a few guys on the Parks and Recreation department maintenance crew to start a Saturday morning gambling ring at the Wolfe Park AYSO fields. If I could just “man up” and poke tiny holes in the cleats, tell the parents the wrong size to buy, and hide little pebbles beneath the insoles, then Jack would be able to make a killing by betting the under. It wasn’t hard to get unsupervised access to the inventory. The store manager was a former state trooper who had resigned in disgrace after letting female speeders off with a warning in exchange for, well… you know where this is going. Anyway, ashamed and despondent, he basically alternated between hiding in the back office to sip from a gin-spiked Powerade bottle and walking outside to rearrange the sidewalk sale rack while chain smoking Marlboro 100’s. His name was Mr. Ron, and what an interesting boss he was! One time we broke the front window of the store with a baseball while he was in the break room. We got the glass repair guy to fix it three days later and paid him out of the petty cash drawer. Mr. Ron never even noticed. So needless to say, my little soccer cleat scam went undetected until one day, Colin came in to buy a new pair of shoes and mooch off of my employee discount. Uncle Jack drove him over to the strip mall, but had to run in and talk to the pizzeria next door about some arrangement between their garbage removal business and the owner’s kneecaps. By the time he finished with that, he was pretty worked up. And it didn’t help when he saw Colin trying on a new pair of Birkenstock sandals. “Get that hippie crap off of your stinking hobo feet, you filthy treehugger!” he screamed. “I’m going in the back to help Ron restock the Powerade. When I get back here, you better have picked out some sneakers that don’t make you look like some kind of communist.” There was a hint of resignation behind the red haze in Colin’s eyes. “Fine,” he said, motioning to a pair of Sambas. “I’ll take these in a size ten.” I ran to the back to retrieve them, but I was so rattled by Jack’s outburst and disoriented by the overwhelming scent of juniper berries permeating from Mr. Ron’s office that I must have grabbed shoes from the wrong pile. It wasn’t until Uncle Jack stumbled to the register, argued over the percentage of my employee discount, called Mr. Ron a cheap bastard, paid for the shoes by endorsing a personal check from the owner of the pizza shop, and demanded that Colin wear them out of the store that I realized my horrible mistake. I’d given my cousin a pair from the “special” indoor soccer pile. With the weather changing over, Jack had started looking for a new revenue stream. The Sambas were juiced! I had absolutely loaded them with pebbles and holes. Before I could muster a word of warning, Colin was sprinting towards the exit - suddenly experiencing severe hunger pangs and eager to grab a slice next door. Then it got pretty ugly. Colin’s legs gave out violently, sending him head first through the front window like some kind of inebriated Olympic hurdler. The store was blasted with glass, blood, gore, and carnage from every direction. Even a liter of Hendrick’s and Arctic Chill couldn’t keep Mr. Ron from noticing. He promptly pulled out his pistol and chased the whole lot of us out of the store. When the glass repair guy revealed that he knew me from the earlier baseball incident, Mr. Ron fired me and the whole scam unraveled. I spent the fall raking leaves and washing cars. The goal-scoring totals soared through the roof in the local indoor soccer league and Uncle Jack had to take out a second mortgage on the house. Thankfully, his “investment” in the pizzeria paid dividends, since Colin’s frequent late night patronage kept the restaurant in the black for the better part of a decade. As for Mr. Ron, he was eventually fired by Olympia Sports’ corporate management not because of his Powerade mixology, but because a large amount of money was discovered to be missing from the petty cash drawer. I guess I probably owe him an apology. While this may seem to you like comprehensive work experience, I usually leave my role at Olympia Sports off of my resume. Your pen pal, Matt
After mailing that letter off to Eric's house in the suburbs, I figured that would be our last exchange. Yet on my last day of work, I sat down at my desk to find an unmarked envelope sitting conspicuously on my keyboard. Enthralled, I opened it up.
Dear Matt, Thanks for the laughs. Good luck, Eric P.S. My middle name is David.
The world needs more guys like Eric.