Let me preface this account by saying that I was born and spent most of my life in Minnesota where the cold winters kill bugs like crazy and I never had to deal with anything the size of what I've seen down in Georgia. Let me also add that I was bug-phobic living in Minneapolis and that's only gotten worse in Atlanta.
At my day job, we have a gym we can join. I usually go over my lunch time so that I can continue to ride my van pool to and from work. So I do my 30 minutes on the elliptical, wipe down the equipment, and head for the locker room to shower and change clothes. I've done it many times. No big deal.
Until Wednesday.
I push open the door to the locker room and what's crawling toward the door? The biggest roach I've ever seen! I might be new to Georgia, but the condo I lived in the first year I was down here didn't have good seals on the doors and I had more than one morning chasing roaches through the living room with the vacuum cleaner. I've seen large roaches before. This surpassed them all. This thing was so big, it needed a license plate.
I didn't scream. I let the door close and backed away. I wasn't sure what to do. I loathe bugs, but roaches are among the worst ever. Did I try to get in the locker room? Did I wait until someone else came and let her smoosh the bug?
Waiting for someone else wasn't the best option I had because Tech Ops is heavily male, so is the membership at the gym, and because I go later to avoid the crowds, the place was pretty empty. I couldn't afford to wait for another woman to decide to head for the locker room. That left option one: try to race past Bugzilla.
Slowly, I pushed the door open. I didn't see him and I rushed past the entry to the lockers. Not long after that, another woman came in and said, "Did you see that giant roach by the door?"
Gah! Yeah, I saw him all right.
I showered with some trepidation, hoping that thing wouldn't head deeper into the locker room.
The other woman left first, and I was certain she must have told an employee, but on my way out, I stopped by the front desk anyone and mentioned the roach from hell. No, no one else had told them about Gargantua. So I ended up being stuck for about five minutes longer to talk to the assistant manager and the man who took care of the gym facilities.
I'm so hoping they sprayed so I don't have another chance encounter with big, dark, and icky.
