I have social anxiety. It’s probably best to get that out of the way right now. It’s not as severe as some and I’m pretty good at covering it up but it’s always there. Ever present. This is key for the story I’m about to tell.

Picture it in your mind’s eye:

Tuesday morning, about 7:45 am and I’m walking into the building to head upstairs and get to work. It’s dark, it’s rainy, it sucks basically. I am not a morning person. I’m thrilled that I manage to get in the door without having to talk to anyone.

Sidebar: One of the worst things in the world for me is that moment when you get to a door at the same time as another person. Do I open the door and go in? Do I hold it open for them? Should they hold it open for me? Then I have to say thank you and make eye contact. I’m so ridiculous that I’ll try to time my steps to avoid the situation.

Anyway, I get in the door and I head towards the lobby and I hear someone asking loudly to someone getting on the elevator if they can “get us to X” with X being the floor number (rather than put specifics, I’m going to try to protect some anonymity here. Don’t want to get fired). X is my floor. And I immediately know things are going to get awkward.

Recently, they made my floor accessible only by key cards in the elevator. It used to be you could go to my floor and then had to access the doors by key card but that’s changed. My floor is also where the training area is. Every few weeks there are batches of new people in and out of the building. They don’t get key cards. Can you see how this could be an issue?

So I walk up to the elevators and the person asks me if I can get them to X. I awkwardly fumble and tell her they can go up to the floor above X and get access that way. Honestly, I don’t know the reasons behind why our floor is locked now and I don’t know these people and frankly I don’t want to be responsible for letting them onto the floor.

Lady follows me into the elevator to go to the floor above mine and obviously I need to go to my floor so I hit it and then she gives me a look because I could get them onto X and I’m trying to ignore her as she’s trying to question me about it and finally I have to just flat out say, “Listen, I wasn’t comfortable giving you access” and hurry off to my desk.

This is why I need a soft skein of yarn at work to use like a stress ball when days start off weird.