Candid Camera

So this is going to be a funny post!  (Rare on this blog, but... here it is.)   

Do you ever have that thing where you go to do one thing and then 50 things happen at the same time and you have to triage the situation?  Well.. I had that.  And it was hilarious (after the fact.)

Tonight I was at one of the gyms I work at.  It wasn't my night to teach, but I was there anyway because it was my best friend Alena's night, and I love to go to her classes when time permits (which is basically every Wednesday night.)  Alena has to come to the gym straight from work, though, so if I get there early I open up the computer check-in program for her, turn on the lights in the Zumba room, etc.  

Now, I should mention that at this time the gym was teeming with people.  Our boss, S, was there, training a client.  Her boyfriend, B, was there too, training people.  And a few other people were around as well.

So I went behind the desk, and saw that the computer already had the check-in program open on it, but it was frozen.  That didn't surprise me because that computer is like from the mesozoic era and takes fffooorrreeevvveeeerrrr to do anything.  At that exact moment, two more trainers came in with 5 or 6 clients.  The trainers felt the need to come in and out from behind the desk 50 times each, for reasons I don't understand.  Of course they're both bodybuilders so they aren't exactly compact people.  So I'm basically sitting ON the desk while they maneuver around in the 2x3 feet of space, their movements impeded by the swiveling desk chair and my purse which was on the ground behind my feet.  Their gaggle of clients was milling all around the desk, putting their stuff everywhere (which was a lot of stuff since all but one of them were females, and a girls gotta have her stuff!  I'm serious!!)  So there were people everywhere and it was very confusing.

As I was busy sharing a small space with two massive guys, three Zumba ladies came in.  Two of them were regulars and needed to scan in with their punchcards, which they couldn't do at that time because the computer program was still frozen, therefore the scanner wasn't working either.  The third lady wanted to buy a 10 punch class card.  I looked for a sign up sheet in the place where they're kept but of course there were none.  I told the regular ladies to please wait one minute while I printed off a sign up sheet for the third lady, and then I would address the frozen program problem.

I turned on the printer and went to print the first page of the sign up sheet.  The printer has this little screen on it and it showed an exclamation point in a circle.  The error message read "Out Of Paper."  Which it wasn't.  The paper was just in the tray crookedly.  I fixed it, and as I went to press the OK button to resume printing, a BEE crawled out from the side of the printer, walked onto the OK button.. and stopped there.

So at this point I've got a lobby full of people, a frozen check-in program, almost no space to move around, a printer with issues and a yellowjacket standing on the OK button.  

A split second of silence.

Then the immediate desk area instantly became pandemonium.  The two regular Zumba ladies leaped back three feet, shrieking.  The 4 or 5 female clients screamed and flapped their arms, rushing away from the desk.  The two trainers and the one lone dude laughed but didn't want to come near the bee.  I couldn't get AWAY from it because I was trapped in the spot by my purse, a chair and two huge men!  

In a fraction of a second the frozen computer program, the temperamental printer, the crowded lobby, all of it became incredibly unimportant.  All I cared about was getting the heck away from this bee!  I'm allergic to bee stings and I don't have an Epi Pen (I know, not smart.)  I looked around and saw a screwdriver, some envelopes, a metal cup with pens and pencils and a protein shake.  None of that could really be used to smash this bee because then I'd be hitting the printer with one of those things.  But the cup that the pens were in would work.  I dumped the pens all over the desk and set the cup upside down on top of the bee, scootched the bee and the cup off of the OK button, and reassessed.

I printed the sign up sheet, ALT CONTROL DELETE-ed the computer, restarted the program and got everyone all checked in.  I slid an envelope under the cup to hold the bee inside and picked it all up off the top of the printer.

At that moment, Alena walked in.  "Hi!" She said.  "Thanks so much for helping me with the desk stuff."

"No problem," I said, laughing.  "Please excuse me one second while I throw this bee out the door."  Of course Alena jumped away from me.  I set the cup outside the door but the bee did not feel like going anywhere.  He crawled ever so slowly onto the rim of the cup and stayed there.  Poor bee, who knows how long he'd be inside the gym with nothing to eat.  It was fine with me if he lived as long as he didn't sting me.  Apparently those terms were satisfactory because we both survived the encounter.  I wonder if he's back in his hive blogging about the scary human he saw today? Kidding. ;)