Random work notes

A few days ago I walked into the bathroom closely behind another woman. There are four stalls, and the woman ahead of me proceeded to completely ignore the three stalls whose doors were slightly ajar in order to walk directly to the one stall whose door was firmly shut and try to push it open. Oddly enough, it didn’t budge, almost like someone was already in there. She seemed mildly confused, and I quickly entered a stall of my own and shut the door so that if I happened to be grinning or even chuckling quietly, this poor woman wouldn’t hear me.


Of course, I’m not free myself from silly mental lapses.Just this morning after swiping my badge on the time clock, I started up the stairs while busily engaged in trying to disentangle something from my badge so I could put it on. I should know by now not to do things like that on the stairs, because the next thing I knew my foot came down well in front of where the stair was and I did a graceful little stumble for someone else who was coming down the stairs. When I do dumb things like that, I automatically laugh at myself, and it came out as a rapid-fire burst this time, causing the person passing me to give me a startled look. Hey, whatever it takes to enter the office with a smile on my face, I guess. There’s something about small, absurd situations that has always made me laugh. The trick is to be paying enough attention to what’s going on around you that you notice them.


The client services department are situated right near my desk, and I walk past their tiny little stations a few times a day. I’m kind of fascinated by them. It rather seems to me that a lot of them are still stuck in high school mode. They regularly put up elementary school style decorations, they just started putting up their Halloween ornaments and to be honest I’m kind of jealous. Why doesn’t R&D provide us with Xeroxed copies of pumpkins and bats to color and cut out and hang up outside our cubicles? Or better yet, in our labs? Perhaps I shall just have to take the initiative for myself and hang up my own Halloween decorations.