Why is the copy room floor sticky?

Not so long ago, I spent a short time writing an advice column for the now-defunct magazine Lucy. This has festered in my draft folder long enough, so for the hell of it, I’m republishing the columns here, with the comments that readers left the first time. Enjoy!

Dear Meredith,

I recently discovered that one of my co-workers who works right outside my office consistently watches porn during his lunch break. He has NO IDEA I can see his computer screen and mutes the volume, but nonetheless, it’s pretty disturbing. I’m not really sure how I should handle the situation, or if I should even “handle” it at all… help?

Confused in my Cube

Dear Cube Monkey,

Were it me, I’d pull up a chair and offer the guy some of my goobers and popcorn and enjoy the matinee. Then I’d follow it up by turning the entire office network into my own personal bit torrent client and finally complete my Facts of Life episode collection because, hey! Your IT department apparently spends it’s days locked in the server closet sucking down bong hits and blowing sales reps for free donuts or something instead of actually doing their jobs.

And while we’re on the subject, before you do anything else, take an afternoon to back up all your important work documents and projects onto DVD-roms. If this guy hasn’t been beaten to death by his own supervisors, had his bloody corpse promptly ejected from the building and then set on fire in the parking lot with all the red flags he should by all rights be sending up, I wouldn’t trust your company to protect your information from a little tiny thing like a malicious computer virus. And when, not if, your network crashes mightily, won’t you look like a hero?

Until then, let’s break this down a little. You obviously don’t have any other major complaints about this person, or else you would have gone and squealed like John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton to the nearest authority figure. This guy has obviously forgotten where he is, and that there’s life outside of his little cubicle universe. You’ve forgotten that, while it’s important to respect or ignore what people do in private, when someone decides to do something that should be private in public, it then becomes fair game.

Which brings me to my point: why are you worried about being nice?  Because that’s what all this knee-jerk ambivalence you’re feeling is about. Remind this idiot that he is not the only person in the building and is, in point of fact, grossing you the hell out.

You’re at a huge advantage over him right now. He probably thinks he’s getting away with something, or at least it’s his little pornorific secret, and chances are, if he suddenly realizes you know what he’s up to, he’ll get enormously embarrassed and either stop or at least move his monitor. I’m guessing you probably don’t want to get HR involved and make this some big hairy deal if you don’t have to (since you’re at a company big enough to have cubicles, it’s totally understandable), so try this: do exactly what I would do. Grab yourself some snackies, approach him, and play a little gotcha game. Until they find the dead hookers in his trunk, you’re probably going to have to keep working with him, so see if using a little humor can’t fix the situation as well as maintain some sort of working relationship, weird and creepy as it will be from now on.

And if that doesn’t work, you shouldn’t have any trouble convincing HR that this is sexual harassment. Sure, it’ll ruin his career and possibly the rest of his life, but nobody should be forced to watch someone elses porn, ever. Think about it.

Love,
Meredith