Every day, whatever the weather, Janice wanders into work wearing chunky purple socks of Himalayan wool stuffed into oversized sandals with full-grain leather straps and a heavy-duty buckle. So I always wonder how her unprotected feet remain laundry fresh and bone dry after a rush hour thunder storm, especially when I'm decanting an inch of rainwater out of my waterproof boots and wringing my own sodden socks out in the men's room sink. She doesn't even bother with an umbrella. A lightweight silver hoodie is her only concession to a torrential downpour, and that looks like it might have spent hours baking in the desert sun rather than draped around her shoulders in a virtual monsoon. There must be a trick to it, I'm sure.
Janice will point to her pentacle earrings while claiming to be an "urban witch." I think this means she tosses unpaid parking tickets and nightclub flyers into her cauldron instead of mandrake root and eye of newt. But if those are the ingredients of an enchantment to prevent her getting wet, then it's a sabbath well spent because the hocus-pocus is definitely effective. Maybe if I agreed to engage in "skyclad" dancing by moonlight she might cast a similar spell for me? A New Age solution to an old age problem: I'll worship the Horned God for a few minutes every week if it means I can walk through parking-lot puddles like a ghost through walls.
But having seen Macbeth more than once, my fear is that when I encounter Janice on the blasted heath we call our break room, she'll predict I'm getting a promotion. I can't really see myself murdering my immediate superiors for a private executive office further away from the toilets, but you never know what you're capable of until the opportunity arises. And, let's face it, a premium parking spot right next to the front door would be an easier way of keeping dry in the rain than cavorting in the nude and chanting gibberish.
The other alternative, of course, is organizing a company-wide witch trial accusing Janice of bewitching the weather to make sure we all get drenched while she stays dry. But are we really going to burn her at the stake in the conference room? Indoor bonfires are surely frowned upon in the building code. We could sit her on a ducking stool in the courtyard fountain, of course, but the pipes are clogged and the basin collects nothing but dead leaves the janitor never clears. So much for turning the workplace into seventeenth century Salem. Oh well, maybe I'll invest in knee-high rubber galoshes and a matching gore-tex parka, if they're black I might actually look like Cotton Mather.
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