I work in a soap opera?

I have become convinced over the past few days that I am working in a soap opera. The only thing we're missing is a guy with a black mustache who screws all the secretaries and ends up getting promoted because he has incriminating evidence about the boss.

Oh, wait, I forgot that he left the department about six months ago, and now he's a Vice President with a Secretarial Grotto instead of a pool.

For one thing, the guy with the office near the coffee machine is often crying. I'll go down to get a cup of joe, and there he'll be, watery eyes rimmed with red, quietly sobbing at his desk. I swear it's like he's either a heroin junkie who needs a fix or he just found out that his girlfriend ran off with his sister.

Worse, they just changed out the coffee machine, so now it takes practically forever to get your drink. So there I am for forty-five seconds while he quietly sobs, without even the basic dignity to close the door to his office.

I have to say something, right? But at the same time, I don't want to hear his tale of woe, and I don't really know him, because I make it a rule not to socialize with anyone whose office is more than two doors away. Too much walking.

So I've decided to do the only thing that is both masculine and allows us both to keep our dignity: I punch him in the crotch and say "there, now you've got something to cry about!"

Then I leave. Hey, I'm the only American; they expect me to be nuts.

Then there's this other guy who spends about half the day in the only toilet in the men's room. I don't know what he's doing in there, but when he comes out he has a big smile on his face and is practically singing.

All I know is I don't shake his hand. Ever. I figure it's better that way.

Add in the haunted water fountain, the fact that every other week somebody goes to the hospital, and the guy that looks like a hobo who nobody knows and who seemingly sleeps in the abandoned office at the end of the hall, and you have a very strange work environment, indeed.

At least all is going well with me, except that I've become addicted to the tomato soup from the new coffee machine. I don't even like tomato soup, either; it's just that this stuff is 25% salt, and I don't eat salt anywhere else, because it leads to hypertension, which can cause heart attack, stroke, and more serious problems like erectile dysfunction.

So I'm drinking ten cups of tomato soup a day, which when you factor in coffee means that I'm crotch-punching crybaby like twenty times a day, which HR has warned me I need to limit to five times a day or face a verbal reprimand.

Which is okay, because my knuckles are killing me.