Confidant in Confinement

I saw something today which made me reminisce, I’ll share.

Years ago when Dson and I worked together as computer chaps, I would on occasion take to hiding in comms rooms knowing that he was about to enter.  I would switch off the lights and I would conceal myself in a cabinet or beneath a desk and wait for my prey to enter, hopefully scaring him enough to eject a fresh brew into his own face.  It didn’t always go to plan, sometimes I would hide and no-one would turn up at all, sometimes it wouldn't be Dson who entered and one time even my boss came into the room whilst I was hid inside a cabinet with my face covered in black and red suckers pretending to be a crap Darth Maul.

During this time one of our colleagues, let’s call him Frank Gallagher, started having an affair with another employee, let’s call her Floella Benjamin.  I was good friends with Floella and had acted as her confidant on a number of occasions, and at this time only I knew of their illicit liaisons.

One particular occasion I had to go into the rear of a comms cabinet to swap a cable and Dson was aware of this.  I finished off the work I was doing and began to make my way to the comms room.  As I entered the darkened room Floella saw me and asked if I could spare her some time.  “Sure, no problem”, I said, “come in here it’s empty”, and I shepherded her into the comms room.  “Frank has told his wife” she said.  The drums from the end of Eastenders played in my head, this wasn't going to be a quick conversation I thought.  She was married, he was married, they both had kids and she was scared to death.....

20 minutes had gone by when Frank entered the room.  Obviously, and quite thankfully, they had things to say to each other, “Just let me swap a cable and I’ll leave you to talk in here”, I said.  I walked round the cabinets and opened the one I wanted to find Dson tightly squeezed into the confined space with one finger over his lips.  He would have frightened me, he did frighten me a little bit, but he didn’t want to be exposed as an eavesdropper.  I quickly swapped the cable, left Dson inside the cabinet and then exited the room to leave Frank & Floella to talk.  They talked for a further 50 minutes!

Whilst at my desk I remembered that Dson had annoyingly changed the ring tone on his phone to the theme tune from Friends and I knew that he had his phone on him.  I rang his phone a number of times during his confinement and all he could do was attempt to muffle the sound, the small area that enclosed him didn't allow him the room to switch his phone off.  He spent the 1 hour and 10 minutes undetected though, and became the confidant they never knew they had.

I still laugh about this to this day.

"The Cabinet of Confinement"