August 16, 2013
Dear Everyone:
The building that I’m currently working in is approximately 200 yards
long. There are two main
reasons for this:
1) When it was first built, 30-plus years ago, land was cheap and the
company could build whatever it wanted.
2) There’s a
municipal airport very nearby and no one, not even
the “single largest employer in the city” was allowed to build higher
than four stories.
(There have been numerous news stories about that airport; planes making
emergency landings on the freeway; the infamous flight that
crashed into
the local shopping mall, killing a department store
Santa in the
process.)
So the building is four stories tall and two football fields long.
It is divided, roughly, into four “zones” dubbed, imaginatively,
“Zone A”, “Zone B”, “Zone C”, and (you guessed it!) “Zone D”.
Originally, the zones were designated by color:
Red, Green, Blue and Orange, before someone realized that people
who are colorblind can’t see the difference.
Each zone is approximately 50 yards long.
For purposed of identification, I’m on the third floor, Zone A,
or “A3” for short.
As I said, the building is over 30 years old and some things need a
little work. So they shut
the water off in Zone B for about three weeks while they made some
repairs and upgrades. And
the people who worked in Zone B had to find water elsewhere.
Meaning: No
restrooms, no sinks, and no coffee.
Consequently, people who work in Zone B became accustomed to coming here
to Zone A to get their morning
coffee and use the restrooms.
It expanded their horizons and let us reconnect with people we
might not usually see very often.
Then, they reopened the restrooms in Zone B.
And promptly shut the water off here in Zone A.
Which meant that using the restroom had just become a 50-yard
dash between meetings. OK,
we can learn to live with that.
But then! They suddenly
cleared out all the coffee at Zone B.
No Pete’s! No
Starbucks! No hot water for
tea, etc.!
And all the people from Zone A, and all the people from Zone B started
running (in some cases, literally) to Zone C for their morning fix.
Guess what happens when three times as many people start showing
up for coffee at the same time in the same place.
Right: They run out
of coffee. Quickly.
Imagine, if you will, that you are on your way to work.
You stop at your favorite drive-thru coffee kiosk, only to find
that it is closed, with a hand-lettered sign directing you to another
kiosk, three blocks away. So
you drive three blocks and get in line behind all the other irritable
drivers, only to find out, when you get to the window, that they only
have decaf for now. The next
kiosk is in the center of a shopping mall.
You get the picture.
More recently, they reinstated the coffee service at Zone B.
Whew! And someone
told me this morning that the plumbers would be at work at 4:00 AM next
Monday to make sure the water was working properly in Zone A.
The end is in sight.
And, right on cue, came the announcement that Zone C would be shut down
starting next Monday.
Naturally.
Love, as always
Pete
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