I hesitate to call it a collective maddness, since that implies an extraordinary state, and this seemed more a manifestation of something that was always there, just below the surface, implicit in all our daily interactions.→[More:] I remember the argument intruding on my consiousness slowly. At first just a slightly larger ripple in sea of noise and distraction that the office swam in. Jan and Tim were shouting at each other over some stupid email sent or not sent. Tim (I later heard) looked ready to hit her and Jan had her arms up to defend herself.

Uri had been trying to get past them with a fresh flaggon of coffee, since they were smack dab in the middle of the right-of-way to his desk and he finally decided to just push his way though. When Uri jostled Tim, it must have seemed to Jan that he was going for her, because she struck out with a haymaker sending Tim sprawling back and sending Uri's boiling hot black coffee straight in to his face.

Reports become sketchy at this point, but as best as I can figure, blinded and scalded, Uri began screaming and flailing wildly, eventually hitting one of those metal shelves top heavy with old computer junk and out of date technical manuals while Tim fell backwards in to my cubicle wall, knocking it down. He came up quick and made as if to go for Jan. Now this is all I saw, and I figured Tim had finally snapped, so I leaped up out of my chair and tackled him to the ground.

Meanwhile, Uri's bookshelf crashed in to two other cubes, smashing monitors and sending sparks flying everywhere. Tim got his hands on a keyboard, and from his prone position, starting beating me in the head with it.

I don't really remember too much after that, but perhaps someone else here can fill in more of the details...