One day, Wally our office cleaner, was cleaning the toliets when we decided to put a wooden wedge under the bottom of the door so that it would jam and he wouldn’t be able to come out again.
When he finished the job he picked up his bucket and mop and tried to open the door. When it wouldn’t open he pushed a bit harder but it still didn’t budge. He lost his cool then and threw his shoulder against the door as hard as he could but met with little or no success.
“Let me out will ya,” he yelled, “you bastards!”
Thinking that a frail old bloke like Wally couldn’t possibly harm us, we left him in there for a couple of minutes longer. We then removed the wedge from underneath the door and the next time he threw his shoulder against the door, it flew open and out stormed Wally, as wild as a raging bull.
With a swing of his arm he threw the steel bucket across the room which headed in a neat little arc towards the glass top of one of the tables. I dived for it and just caught it in time only to see the enraged Wally (he was totally out of control) pick up a chair and it also came flying across the room.
One of the other guys caught it just in time, badly bruising his arm doing it. Then Wally determined to vent his anger on anything or anybody, picked up a table and it followed a similar path as the previous ‘missiles’.
For the next few minutes he threw across the room anything he could lay his hands on. Bottles, rulers, tape dispensers, boxes, anything. His strength was absolutely amazing.
It would have looked comical or even hilarious if it hadn’t been for the potentially dangerous situation.
“Calm down Wally,” we pleaded. “Whoa there Wally.” “Take it easy mate.” “Careful old timer.”
Our pleas fell on deaf ears and we wondered what we were to face first; a lot of broken glass and furniture or Wally with a heart attack.
Finally, exhausted, cursing and swearing and promising further retribution, he stormed out of the department which by now looked as if it had been hit by a tornado.
Talk about a joke well and truly backfiring on us. We had cuts and bruised everywhere.
We weren’t able to have a good laugh about it until a couple of weeks later.