You Snooze, You Lose Your Cool

One of the things my older brother always does at a new job is find a place for his lunchtime naps.  A lot of people would suggest his car as the only appropriate place.  But because he lives in Texas and doesn't want to waste gas running his air conditioner, that's not a viable option for him (except for the two or three days of cool weather per year).  So at his last few jobs, he's found empty cubicles or offices to nap in.

Disclaimer for anyone wanting to hire him: He only does this during lunch.  He doesn't nap during work hours.

Well at his newest job, he has his own office.  So he decided recently that he was going to take a nap in the privacy of that office.  He closed the door, turned off the light, and made a pillow out of a roll of paper towels covered by his gym towel (pre-workout).  Then he set an alarm and fell asleep.  About 40 minutes later (five minutes before his alarm), he woke up.  And as he reached for his phone to look at the time, he noticed that a few inches from his phone was a mouse... scurrying towards his face.

(Please take a moment to gasp at this out loud and clap your hand over your mouth.)

Needless to say, he didn't go back to sleep.  He jumped up faster than the kid at my high school who accidentally sat on his English teacher's lap during a power outage (me).  He got up so fast that he scraped his elbow on the floor.  And I'm guessing if there had been a camera on him, everyone in the country would be able to enjoy the clip on America's Funniest Videos (or YouTube for you youngsters).

The embarrassing part was explaining to his coworkers why he was so worked up about it (and why his elbow was bleeding).  Because normal men don't panic about a tiny little mouse.  So he had to explain that the only reason his heart was racing and he was acting all frantic was because he had awoken to the mouse directly in front of his face.  Then he had to explain why he was lying on the floor in his office in the first place.  And I don't think it's very easy to explain all that.  So his coworkers either think he's a weirdo who lies on the floor to take naps during work, or he's a weirdo who's terrified of mice and lies about it to save face.  So either way he's a weirdo who lies. (Homonym wordplay! Hooray!)