HOW VALENTINE'S DAY ALMOST LED TO AN HARASSEMENT CASE

Many years ago, the stars aligned in such a way that three women ended up working together who must have had secret aspirations at Martha Stewart's job. Certainly, their minds were not on the ones they currently held. So, whatever holiday happened to hit, they would decorate the office.

I was working at the other end of the hall with two males. St. Valentines Day was fast approaching. They were at their office decorating. The Red-Light District in Amsterdam had not seen the likes of it. The heart dingle balls dangling from the ceiling made me think that perhaps a drag queen heart surgeon's convention had orchestrated this. They were spritzing cinnamon scented air freshner to such a degree that we had to shut the emergency door to keep it at their end of the building. Cut-out angels adorned the doors.

"What fresh hell is this?" I said to my male coworker as we walked by, quoting Dorothy Parker. He laughed.

"Sartre"s No Exit, is more like it." He said.

When the angel soaps were found in the washroom he could take it no more and war was declared. We added our one contribution to the decoration at our end of the building. We'd found a photo of a dead cupid---shot through the heart and prone on the ground. Surprisingly, the photocopy machine actually worked and held paper. We enlarged it.

HAPPY V.D. DAY. wrote my coworker.

One would think that given the six or seven marriage break-ups between the three women that they wouldn't be so devoted to the dreaded day, but I guess they were. We later heard that they'd ripped the offending dead cupid off our wall, and with lower lip pouting and near tears had gone to their manager about it. It took a while to placate the one.

So, it's best to leave valentine's out of the office(especially if there's a lot of males around). And incidentally, a year later, the husband of one of the women left her for another man. Best to leave dead cupid's alone too.