I first experienced this a couple of weeks ago and thought nothing much of it. But the incident has since then spiralled into something that has left me at a loss with.
The first time this happened was a couple of weeks ago, in my office building. In the building, there are many rooms, some of which have been known to be quite “dirty”. You know what I mean. This unfortunately included the room that I am currently stationed in.
Most of the room’s employees leave at around evening time, apart from myself and another employee (let’s call him Paul), who would stay until the night time. Paul sits at a cubicle a few rows across from mine, and we soon settled into a nightly ritual of me yelling “bye Paul” from my seat, and him replying, “ok bye boss”, whenever I leave (even though I am a more junior employee than him). This was a phrase that no one else besides Paul would say to me.
On this particular night, everything was occurring as it should - it was me and Paul left in the room. Before I left, I bid him adieu, and as per usual he’d said “ok bye boss”. But what was weird was that after this line, about a couple of steps later I heard him say something again that sounded oddly like “ok bye boss” (I wasn’t paying attention, having already assumed the interaction to be over).
I turned back, walked over to his table, and asked him if he’d said anything else. He looked confused and said no.
I proceeded to leave, and when I was nearing the door of the room I heard his voice again, from his direction, and it was once again, “ok bye boss”.
Don’t ask me why, but I decided to head back to his seat again, and the same scene played out - me asking him if he’d said something and him going no, and adding “you need to sleep” (presumably attributing the issue to me lacking sleep). I could tell he was starting to freak out a little bit as well so I brushed it off and made my way out once more.
This is where I wished that the entire situation had ended but alas, right as I stepped through the door, I heard his voice again, and this time it went “you need to sleep”.
I didn’t turn back - I headed right to the lift and left for the night.
So what had happened? I genuinely don’t know. Perhaps I was tired. I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. At the time, I decided to think nothing about it.
Until a couple of nights ago, when this happened.
On this particular night, I had bid Paul goodbye, waited for his usual reply and headed out, before suddenly remembering that I ought to remind him to switch off the room lights before leaving. There had been a recent circular sent a week ago to the employees in the room, informing that the morning cleaners had complained about electricity wastage due to room lights being left on throughout the night.
I did a U-turn, sped-walked towards Paul’s desk, turned into his cubicle, and -
Nothing.
He wasn’t there.
I was confused. Very confused. I’d considered the possibility of Paul having stepped out from the room while I had been making my u-turn, but that would have been very unlikely considering that I had been walking along the only path in and out of the room. I would have known if he had left. So where was Paul?
Now, contrary to popular belief - I wasn’t stupid. I knew the reputation of the room I was in, and I remember what had happened a couple of weeks ago. This was my cue to leave, but I mustered enough composure to do one last task - to leave a note on Paul’s table, reminding him to switch off the lights.
Wrong move. As I reached over to his notepad, my gaze fell upon a small whiteboard propped against Paul’s computer monitor. On it, he had written he had been out of office for the past week, and to please contact him at his mobile if we needed to.
As I processed the note - and the implications of it - it finally dawned upon me how quiet the room had fallen. I could no longer hear the hum of the air conditioner, the low drone of the computers. It was completely silent - which made it all the more easier to discern the soft murmuring coming from the cubicle behind Paul’s.
As the voice grew louder, I could slowly make out the words it was muttering.
“Bye Paul ok bye boss bye Paul ok bye boss bye Paul ok bye boss.”
Over and over again.
The voice alternated unnervingly between Paul’s voice (albeit several octaves lower) and a slightly higher voice that I didn’t quite recognise at first, before realising that it was mine.
I wish I could say I ran off immediately. Unfortunately immense fear had taken hold and I froze. Frozen to the spot as the voice grew louder and louder, until it paused - just for a split second - before it went, “you need to sleep”.
That did the trick for me. The spell was broken. I flew out from the room (to hell with the lights), into the lift, into my car, and sped off.
I spent the entire night in extreme paranoia, and barely got any sleep at all.
The next day I returned to office, and was immediately underwhelmed by how normal everything seemed to be. People were hustling about, and the room was bustling with the appropriate noises.
I opened up my email, and right at the top of my inbox was yet another circular reminding us on how unacceptable it was that the lights had now been left switched on, overnight, for an entire week.
An entire week.
An entire week of me saying bye to Paul, an entire week of hearing him saying bye back to me, an entire week of me leaving the light switches switched on, blissfully unaware that I had in fact, been the last person in the room.
I had been the last person, but I was definitely not alone.
I now make it a point to leave office earlier during the evening.
Unfinished tasks be damned - there are some things scarier than a disgruntled boss.