Shark Attack

Stories from Beyond

My entire time at Zocdoc the company has been headquartered at 568 Broadway in NYC. Over the years we have acquired and relenquished different floors in the building as our needs have changed, but the constant has always been the 9th floor. When I started the space had recently been expanded to half the floor and my desk was in a room in the back corner looking out over Crosby street. That room seems like a lifetime ago.

Things have changed a a lot since 2012. There are the obvious things like my desk moving to a refurbished area on the 2nd floor of the building, but also more mundane things. In those days if you were the first one in the office you had to remember to turn off the alarm. There were definitely motion detectors and cameras and probably other things as well. In those days I usually got into the office around 10 so it never came up, but if you forgot than the alarm would go off and the police would come. Now there are office staff responsible for this.

So one day my co-worker Carson got a remote control shark balloon. I seem to recall it being this one, but I could be wrong:

It was silly and a good 15 minutes of entertainment which made it well worth the money (especially since I hadn't paid for it). After its 15 minutes of fame it was banished to live in the corner of the room, loosely tied to a shelf against the wall and largely forgotten about. Occasionally you might see it out of the corner of your eye as it drifted in a small circle, but just like the random nude mannequin in the window of the building across the street it just became a static part of the scenery.

Fast forward a few months and there is a frantic early morning text. Anyone in the office?! The alarm is going off! Nobody was working. Something must be wrong. The police were summoned and the closest person to the office got there as quickly as they could.

And all they found was a shark floating through the office being pushed around by the air conditioning.