So my office had its own little brush with the anthrax scare this week. On Monday, one of my co-workers found white powder in her briefcase and decided to take it to her local fire department. They impounded her briefcase, car AND soy latte and promised to get test results back within 48 hours. The office was split between people in a state of controlled hysteria and people who thought she was mountaining a molehill. My boss and I discussed starting a bet to see whether the powder was from a recent trip to Dunkin's or a spill from a gym bag.

Yesterday the test results still hadn't come back, and the employee in question sent an email to all of us complaining about the inefficiency of the Mass. health authorities and how God forbid we should have an actual bioterrorism attack here. (Of course the authorities probably really aren't prepared for that, but that's another story. My colleague forgot to mention in her rant that they've had over 5,000 people in Mass. come forward with "samples" over the past few weeks, all of which have to be tested even if they're obviously shredded coconut.)

Anyway, it turned out that it wasn't anthrax (of course), so we all either breathed a sigh of relief or nodded knowingly at each other. But then this morning, I found out that my esteemed co-worker accused another co-worker of planting the fake anthrax in her bag! More hysteria, backstabbing, shrill voices, and whispering to cohorts in hallways has resulted.

So here's my solution to this problem. My company is 80% staffed by XXers, who individually are generally nice, reasonable people. However, when they get congregate in a finite space for 8+ hours at a time, all that estrogen floating around combines to make a potentially deadly mixture of hysterical emotion. What we need is to bring in more men, preferably really manly men, to tell these females to shape up or else. I'd try it myself, but as a fellow female, I'm afraid the only result would be a black mark on my secret record and dirty looks from now until doomsday. Or at least 'til I leave.