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Sometimes, your workplace can take on the characteristics of a haunted house.

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Here are six ways your workplace could be like a haunted house.

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Delightful Distractions-3

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Oh, yes! It’s that time of year when eerie artificial brick fronts start cropping up on nearby abandoned buildings.  Grab an extra pair of underwear and the hand of your most trusted and courageous companion — it’s haunted house season!

In this area, the longest-running haunted house is the infamous Haunted Forest in American Fork. This is its 26^th year of frightening the daylights out of all of us. Thank you, scary rubber face man with your loud cutting tools.  Where has the time gone? Although the Haunted Forest hijinks should not be mistaken for what is arguably the most haunted house in the area. That dubious honor goes to The Lehi Hospital in Lehi. With enduring accounts of hauntings and ghostly hangings, this location truly WILL scare the daylights out of you, as will the charges for trespassing.

But as I sit and marvel at the area’s seemingly insatiable thirst for all things creepy, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities in these two camps. Frankly, both are environments I would rather avoid, if given the choice, but there are other commonalities between a typical workplace and a Halloween Haunted House. Here are six of them.

Here are six ways the workplace is much like a Halloween Haunted House:

1. Your favorite stapler always seems to walk away on its own. This could also apply to your favorite office chair, pen, important files, favorite mouse for your computer — you name it. Regardless of the circumstance, your most cherished office treasure has a suspicious way of splitting the scene when you need it most.

1. Maintenance shows up with a chain saw right at the same moment you are trying to sort out a major dilemma. OK, that doesn’t truly happen. But it is uncanny how often an industrial-sized lawn mower roars to life just outside your window at the same time you are trying to handle an important matter over the phone. Is it a coincidence or just the bogeyman?

1. Scary things are lurking in the refrigerator. Whether it was Bruce’s Paleo experiment from a few months back or the cake left over from Karl’s retirement party last summer, mystery items accumulate in dark corners. And to think — in a former life that sandwich-shaped parcel was edible.

1. The dress code challenge. There is always one employee who takes the perimeter of the dress code to the outer limit. It could be a low cleavage line, a dusty dinner jacket from the 1940s, dark eyeliner covering the entire upper portion of one’s face, torn clothing or wild hair — and these are often the employees handling clients.

1. The parking garage is a labyrinth of twists and turns. Each day we maneuver through obstacles of large puddles collecting under leaky ceiling pipes, stinky garbage piling under the stairs, and the sleeping transient lacking pants and blocking the stairwell, which all add to the drama.

1. The person responsible for messing up the company’s largest account vanishes at the precise moment of discovery. This phenomenon also applies to the office staff who are missing without a trace at 8 a.m. and again at 4 p.m. It’s a mystery.

So as we make our ambitious plans to venture out to the nearest haunted house this weekend, and there are many from which to choose, why not take a moment and appreciate the most “haunting” haunted house of all — your workplace.  

For more information on haunted houses and other fun activities that do not quality for time and a half, please visit heraldextra.com.