rhythmaning (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhythmaning) wrote2007-06-15 09:17 pm
rhythmaning) wrote2007-06-15 09:17 pm
Entry tags:
Lost. And found.
For the past few weeks, I have been working in quite a large office building; it houses maybe two or three thousand people. And each part of it looks the same.
A couple of times – usually first thing in the morning, as I walked in to work thinking about something else - I have given myself a shock by forgetting to walk up a flight of stairs. Instead, I walked to where my desk would be if it were on the ground floor (or, for that matter, an alternative universe) and thought, Father Bear-like, who’s sitting at my desk? At which point I realised, once more, that I was on the wrong floor.
The other day was worse. I was in a meeting. I walked to the meeting with colleagues, and during the first break, I found my way back to the meeting room easily and confidently. During the lunch break, though, I must have taken a wrong turn. I walked through to another bit of the building – which looked identical, of course – until I realised it wasn’t actually where I wanted to be. I traced my steps back. It still wasn’t where I wanted to be. I traced back again; I walked past some people three or four times. I didn’t ask them for directions. (I am a bloke, of course.)
I was lost.
I panicked. I was like a baby rabbit caught in the lights; or a child lost in the supermarket. I really was lost.
In the end, before they sent out a search party, I decided the only way out of this was to return to the lobby on the ground floor, then walk to my office, and then walk back to the meeting room. Fortunately, a colleague was at her desk, and gave me directions. I found it easily. Indeed, I must have walked past the meeting room several times.
Apparently, this happens a lot in this office building. People get lost for weeks – for their whole careers.
One reason for this is that there are rooms that don’t exist. Indeed, it is possible to have a meeting in a room which doesn’t exist. Since the building was opened, ten years ago, the partition walls have moved. Walls that formed rooms have been taken away; others have been erected. The rooms were originally numbered in an orderly logical sequence, so that if you knew the room number, you would know how to find the room. But as the rooms have moved and changed, the numbers are now meaningless.
The electronic meeting room booking system now has several rooms on it which don’t actually exist.
In similarly Hogwarts-ian style, I was at Haymarket Station yesterday. Where there is a platform 0. Since zero is an absence (and all you mathematicians lurking out there, please don’t correct me!), I was wondering whether there really was a platform there; or just an abyss.
And what if there were only one platform at Haymarket? Would that be platform 0?
A couple of times – usually first thing in the morning, as I walked in to work thinking about something else - I have given myself a shock by forgetting to walk up a flight of stairs. Instead, I walked to where my desk would be if it were on the ground floor (or, for that matter, an alternative universe) and thought, Father Bear-like, who’s sitting at my desk? At which point I realised, once more, that I was on the wrong floor.
The other day was worse. I was in a meeting. I walked to the meeting with colleagues, and during the first break, I found my way back to the meeting room easily and confidently. During the lunch break, though, I must have taken a wrong turn. I walked through to another bit of the building – which looked identical, of course – until I realised it wasn’t actually where I wanted to be. I traced my steps back. It still wasn’t where I wanted to be. I traced back again; I walked past some people three or four times. I didn’t ask them for directions. (I am a bloke, of course.)
I was lost.
I panicked. I was like a baby rabbit caught in the lights; or a child lost in the supermarket. I really was lost.
In the end, before they sent out a search party, I decided the only way out of this was to return to the lobby on the ground floor, then walk to my office, and then walk back to the meeting room. Fortunately, a colleague was at her desk, and gave me directions. I found it easily. Indeed, I must have walked past the meeting room several times.
Apparently, this happens a lot in this office building. People get lost for weeks – for their whole careers.
One reason for this is that there are rooms that don’t exist. Indeed, it is possible to have a meeting in a room which doesn’t exist. Since the building was opened, ten years ago, the partition walls have moved. Walls that formed rooms have been taken away; others have been erected. The rooms were originally numbered in an orderly logical sequence, so that if you knew the room number, you would know how to find the room. But as the rooms have moved and changed, the numbers are now meaningless.
The electronic meeting room booking system now has several rooms on it which don’t actually exist.
In similarly Hogwarts-ian style, I was at Haymarket Station yesterday. Where there is a platform 0. Since zero is an absence (and all you mathematicians lurking out there, please don’t correct me!), I was wondering whether there really was a platform there; or just an abyss.
And what if there were only one platform at Haymarket? Would that be platform 0?
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And of course, the little piles of breadcrumbs at strategic places
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I used to do that all the time in Megabank Panopticon. I don't think I was the only one, either.
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