Permanent Images

I'm not fond of my new office. The one we were in before was nothing special and had to go, but the new one is a shoebox, full of people and paper and printers. The other desk is practically at my elbow, which is fine the two days a week when it's Kraiger. Not so fine the three days a week when it's the kid I don't know that well, whose job is running the business end of the US office as well as reading the the world's greatest fantasy novels online.

It's tolerable. That's the best I can come up with. Sure, it could be worse. But it's far from ideal.

The building we moved into is heavily securitized. Is that a word? No one goes in or out without clearance. We cannot even take a Priority Mail box to the post office without getting a hall pass and swiping our ID cards. This irritates me. I hate being treated like I'm in an airport eight hours a day. A very small, crowded airport where the customs officers keep me in line. Grrr.

Every morning, I walk in and swipe my pass card in the lobby. A red light turns green. I hear a beep. I'm allowed to proceed to the elevator.

On the 23rd floor, I swiped again. Beep! I'm allowed past the glass doors and can proceed to my office, which is unlocked by a mere key.

Over the weeks, I've gotten lazy. First, I'd just hold my wallet up to the swipe pad. Beep! Then I realized I could hold my entire handbag up to it. Beep!

Yesterday, I used my handbag to beep my way into the elevator, then onto my floor. Kraiger was already in.

"I saw something disturbing today," he said.

"What?"

"You know how you can hold up your wallet to the swipe pad to come in the building?"

"Yeah."

"I saw this guy stick his butt onto the swipe pad. He had his wallet in his back pocket."

We both sat quietly for a minute, me imagining the scene and him unfortunately recalling it.

"Ewwww," was all I could come up with.

Eww.