"What the fuck is that smell?"
After a week we had finally got the boss to acknowledge that there was a funky smell working its way through the cube farm. The first I knew of it was when this chick named Sue came over for her cubicle and informed me that someone had "dropped one" near her cubicle and needed refuge in mine. The smell persisted however, and as the bossman, in his oversized and normal smelling office, couldn't care less we rang maintenance and who told us that they were really busy (read: drinking coffee) but would send someone up when they could.
So the smell keeps getting worse and worse, people are taking about transferring department just to get away from this horrid stench that was somewhere between a dead person and six-year-old milk. Anyway, finally after suffering through it for a whole week the boss finally catches a whiff and decides to call maintenance (I wish I'd thought of that!) but something (read: a bag of donuts) had just come up and they were all unavailable.
After some office teamwork we isolate the source of the smell to a vent in the corner so I'm like "fuck this" and grab a screwdriver to open the stinkhole up. After struggling on it for twenty minutes with my puny office arms I wrench it open and... there shining in the fluorescent lights of the office is a nice open can of sardines. I hold it up for all to see and inquire "Who the hell pissed off maintenance?!"
"Ahh... shit. I got into an argument over a carspace with that old janitor" says the new guy. The Boss was shitting bricks and stormed down to maintenance to give them an earful which only resulted in his car getting keyed (which we couldn't prove) so we gave up causing trouble and let them win. As for the new guy: he became the office bitch. If you needed a coffee or snack from the cafe across the road or your car washed during lunch he was your man for the next two months.
Lesson Learned: Don't fuck with maintenance.
