It’s basically awesome to work in an old clock tower overlooking a square.

It’s great on a nice day, because instead of brand new, suicide-proof, hermetically sealed windows, we have huge, loose, old, slide-y windows and we can throw them wide open like rolling up the warehouse loading dock door and let all our paperwork flurry about.

It’s great when it snows because we’re eight floors up and we can see the dramatically swirling snowflakes getting caught in strange wind patterns between the buildings.

It’s great around the holidays when the tree lighting ceremony takes place and, instead of craning our necks and standing in a pack in the cold, we can pull the couch up to the window and make cocktails.

(another crappy cell phone picture)

It’s only slightly less great when there’s a three-hour sports rally on a Thursday involving hoards of screaming fans and the team’s cheer-leading squad is riling them up with dances to horrifically outdated pop standards (ranging from the standard sports gems by 2 Unlimited, to covers of Gloria Estefan hits, to 867-5309).

It’s only slightly less great when I have to turn up the ringer on the office phone sitting eight inches to my left because I almost didn’t hear a call come through.

It’s only slightly less great when the PA system for said rally sets off car alarms four blocks away, which means that when you are in a building zero blocks away with those same leaky, rickety, single-pane windows, your paperclips are dancing on the desk before they take the lemming leap off the side and land on top of the pile of everything else that has vibrated off the edge before it.

Sigh.

Clinical History:

Habits:
Coffee: None
Tea: None
Cigarettes: None
Alcohol: None
Other: Root Beer Floats

From the confines of my cozy desk at work, where the magic of paper pushing and number summing happens, I have the occasion to become inordinately intimate with the details of the lives of complete strangers. I often come to know of an individual’s marital infidelity, teenage felony conviction, or STD long before I ever, if I ever, see this person face to face.

In the process, I have met some people on paper who have led devastatingly depressing lives. And I know that depressing lives are not entirely uncommon, but I was recently disheartened to realize that in addition to the scores of mundanely melancholy with which I am familiar, I have also racked up a collection of three that are sad in shockingly blockbuster proportions. Any of them would make a killer screen play and more than once has my mind wandered to how I could possibly decide which would win the Truly Tragic Trophy.

And so, I put it to you, which pitch would you nominate for the Oscar?

• action shots of expensive cars and the untimely demise of an angelic five year old.
• superhero adventures from orphaned naissance to chemical burns
Chekhovian comedy of (suicidal) errors

Sometimes my job is a real downer.

That you are sitting at your desk at work when your boss buzzes you:

Boss: This adjuster just left a message for me on the **** case. What’s going on with it?

You: I’m waiting to receive a police report and the last batch of records and then I’ll be ready to send out the demand.

Boss: Alright. Well, will you call this guy and give him an update?

You: Sure.

Boss: Do you have his number?

You: I’ll come grab it.

You walk into the boss’ office where he is scribbling down the message for you.

Boss: Here is the number.

You: Thanks.

You walk back to your desk. You pull out the relevant file to have the claim number handy. You pick up the phone and look down at the message to get the number.

You dial 800.233.2861.

Are you doing it? Go ahead…

I happen to be the smallest in my office.  And I happen to sit at the one desk that, when this office was remodeled, belonged to a very, very large man who requested that his desks be placed THIS HIGH.

Fortunately, some sense was applied, and he was only allowed to have them raised that high.  But what is a slightly-higher-than-average desk to a normal person, is a desk you’d find up the beanstalk to me.

After a few years, I’ve finally received my new, spanky, spinny, cushy, draft-height chair!  Ta DA!  And believe me, it’s not getting old.

Now I can finally retire the stack of deposition transcripts I’ve been employing as a booster seat.