Chapter 29: Slings & Arrows
I was back at work by 1pm and resumed my normal workday, though I started to get some looks from my coworkers that I wasn’t used to. I shook it off and got back to work each time.
At about 3:30pm, I saw The Goat walk in. He smirked as he passed the aisle my cube was on. He worked a night shift for the BLM, checking on campgrounds, handling late calls that would otherwise need to wait for the day staff the next morning, and such. He normally didn’t get in until 4:00, when his shift actually started. Weird.
About fifteen minutes later, a male coworker I didn’t know very well came up to my desk holding a piece of paper. He was another one of the rangers, by his uniform, but I didn’t remember where he was stationed. He looked embarrassed.
“Hey, Chris. What do you need?”
“I…um… I mean… I sort of found this…in the men’s.” He nodded his head back towards the staff bathrooms, then he handed me the paper. It was an 8⨉10 glossy photograph. Of me! At the WNBR! Naked and riding down a Salt Lake City street!
“I’m sorry. I mean, I’m embarrassed for you. It’s a beautiful shot, and you’re beautiful, but… Oh, god…” He trailed off, then said again, “I’m sorry,” and started to shuffle away.
I was shocked. I was angry. Chris started looking even more nervous.
But then I saw that he was right. It was a nice shot. Well-composed, tack sharp, nicely timed. I liked it! “Stop,” I said to Chris. His eyes went wide, but he stopped trying to retreat. I reached into my desk, pulled out a silver paint marker I used for labeling things like wall warts, shook it up, and used it to autograph the photo, “For Chris the Chivalrous, my champion,” then below that, signed it “Kaitlyn G” with a flourish and handed it back to him.
His jaw dropped, and he almost let go of the photo.
Since it seemed he wasn’t going to be getting any words out, I said, “You’re welcome,” answering his clear but unspoken thanks. “Chris, c’mere a sec,” and I motioned him downward. He bent over my desk, squatting a bit, and I said, “I think if you go back into the copy room, you’ll find Ed Goetz making more of these. Go see if that’s the case. If so, just tell him you liked the pic in the bathroom, and see if you can get another one of the prints.”
“You’ve got it, Kaitlyn,” he said and scooted off on his chivalrous mission. I’d given him the title, hadn’t I?
While he was gone, I started to think about why I was initially upset, and I decided it wasn’t that I was seen naked. Clearly I was long past that now. What had annoyed me is that all three times The Goat had seen me naked, he was in control of the situation: he’d been clothed, and I’d been naked, at his mercy. I decided I needed to seize control of this situation and flip things around on him. Then he’d cease to be a problem.
Chris came back then and said, “You guessed it. He’s got a stack of photos this high,” holding his fingers about a quarter inch apart, “running them off on the office photo printer. He let me have one, and then on the way back here, I saw another posted in the break room.” He handed me both prints.
“Thanks, Chris. I owe you for this.”
“Nonsense. I’ve already been paid,” he said with a gentle smile, and waved the autographed photo at me.
I smiled back, then waited for Chris to return to his desk.
I then stood, clapped my hands twice, and said loudly, “Everyone! A moment, please?” When all eyes were on me, I said, “This weekend, I rode in the First Annual World Naked Bike Ride up in Salt Lake. And yes, I was naked! Well, I wore my cycling shoes.” There was some laughter at this. “The event was all about raising awareness of cyclists on the roads, reducing dependency on petroleum, and saving the Earth for future generations.” This elicited some murmurs of support. “Ed’s in the copy room making prints of me riding in the event. Anyone who wants one, go get one from Ed and bring it by my desk. I’ll sign one for each of you, okay? Thanks!”
Then I sat back down and waited to see what would happen.
In ones and twos, people got up from their desks and walked back to the copy room. Eventually I had a line at my desk, people handing me photos and requesting autograph wording, me writing as fast as I could, signing each one as the holder wished.
Finally I came to the last person in line. It was The Goat. He sneered at me and slid his photo onto the desk. I picked it up and put it in my desk, then pretended to go back to work. I heard him huff, then pull another photo out of his stack and put it on the desk, his finger on one corner, and he said, “You need to sign this.”
I said, “I need to do nothing of the kind,” and slid the photo out from under his finger and put it into the desk with the other one.
Ed turned on his heel and stomped off, huffing more.
I smiled broadly. Kate 14, The Goat 0.
At this point, my boss Sherry walked up to my desk, squatted down, and in a low voice asked, “What’s going on here?”
I opened my desk drawer and pulled out one of the photos and showed it to her, saying, “Ed is making copies of these and posting them around the office. I think he’s trying to embarrass me with them. Chris found these in the men’s room and in the break room.”
Sherry took the prints, looked at the top one critically, then asked, “’Zatso?”
I nodded.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice dropping to a near-whisper, her eyes compassionate.
“I was a bit upset at first, but I decided I needed to flip the power dynamic on him, take back control of the situation, you know?” She nodded, so I went on, “I sent people to get copies from Ed and started autographing them.”
She gave me a quivering grin that almost broke into laughter, but asked, “You frontin’?”
“Naw, I’m fine, really,” I offered with a smile.
Sherry mastered her emotions, then stood with a stern look on her face and called for everyone’s attention again. “People! I’m proud of Ms. Gutierrez’ participation in the WNBR this weekend.” She held up the photo I’d handed to her. “I think it’s right in line with our mission here at the BLM, and I intend to participate with her next year! I hope some of you will join us. I’ll overlook the use of office equipment for making these photos, but you can’t display them here. The rules won’t allow it, so please pack them up and take them home with you. Thank you.”
Then she turned to me and in a normal tone said, “Come with me,” and she turned and walked briskly to her office, ushering me in before setting back out into the main office area. Shortly, she returned with Ed and had him sit down, too, as she closed the door and walked over to her side of the desk.
“Mr. Goetz, please explain these photographs,” she said, waving at the stack of prints now on her desk, which she’d apparently taken from him.
“What’s to say? It’s her,” Ed said with a sneer, pointing at me, “naked!”
“What I mean is,” she said with a bit of exasperation, “what was your intent in printing them?”
“She wants to run around naked, everyone ought to see!” he said, still not getting it.
“And so you posted them in the men’s room and the break room.”
“Yeah!” he said, looking proud of himself.
“There’s maybe 20 here,” she said, gesturing again at the photo stack, “and there were about a dozen more snapped up out there. Why did you need so many? How were you going to use them?”
“I told you. I was going to post them everywhere.”
“Everywhere,” Sherry said flatly. “Like, maybe grocery stores? Banks?”
“Yeah, like that,” The Goat said proudly.
“And why did you think it was a good idea to use BLM resources to post pictures of Kaitlyn everywhere?”
“Everyone needs to see what a sl… How unprofessional she is!” he said haughtily.
“I see,” Sherry said coldly. “Mr. Goetz, what she did was on her own time, using her own resources, and not even in this same county! To the extent that it impacts BLM at all, I judge it to be for the good. I have warned you already about harassing Ms. Gutierrez. I told you that if you did it again in a way that crossed into workplace bounds that I’d fire you.”
“She doesn’t look harassed to me! She was happily signing the photos just minutes ago!” he complained.
“Just because the arrow missed doesn’t excuse the fact that you aimed and loosed it, Mr. Goetz,” she said sternly. Then her voice dropped to sub-arctic levels. “Hand me all of your BLM property: keys, pens, your clipboard. Bring your uniforms back tomorrow. I don’t want to see you in here again today. You’re fired. Get out.”
He just stared at her, then at me, and back. He slammed his clipboard down on the desk, unloaded his pockets, sorted out his personal items, and left the rest behind atop the clipboard.
“My prints?” he demanded, pointing at the stack of photos on the desk.
“No, Mr. Goetz,” she returned, “these are BLM property. You made them using BLM supplies with BLM equipment in a BLM office. I’m keeping them. If I thought there wasn’t a way to use these to support the BLM’s mission, I’d be charging you with misuse of office equipment and waste of office supplies, too. Get out of here before I decide differently!”
He stomped out and slammed the door shut.
We winced, then relaxed.
I got up, walked around to Sherry’s side of the desk and handed her up out of her chair, then pulled her into a tight embrace. I whispered into her ear, “Thank you. You are a true friend,” kissed her on the cheek, and stepped back from her.
I couldn’t tell how she took this, because my eyes were full of tears, but then she grabbed me and pulled me back into a hug, saying into my ear, “Oh, Kaitlyn, I’m sorry he did that to you, and I’m proud of how you spun it on him.”
Then she let me go and grabbed something off her desk. It was one of the prints. “Would you autograph this for me, please?”
Then my eyes filled with tears again. “You bet. Just give me a sec. I can’t see to write at the moment,” and we laughed and sniffed back our running noses.
I autographed it “See you next year!”