Something special

There is something special about coming to work on a spring morning, when the air is cleaner than an obsessive compulsive's toothbrush, the birds are broadcasting their conversations like histrionic teenagers on a fan forum, and the sun has either had an earlier night last night or has bought itself a new alarm clock. I punch my plastic key into the complementary slot to unlock the door, thinking back to the valuable life lessons taught by shape-matching toddler-toys. How would I have survived this high-tech environment if not for the square pegs of childhood?

Through the door and round the corner walks the feeling-special engineer. I swipe my bar-coded name tag down the (again complementary) time clock channel. It beeps reassuringly - one staccato pip. I, Virge, am in and the machine knows it. There is a bounce in my step. No dragging feet. I don't want to leave nasty black marks on the lino, do I?

Two more corners take me to the start of "the carpet". Ordinarily this carpet's spectre would loom up before me and wail its mournful cry that I may have bitched about in former journal entries. It normally whispers to me as I tread its rotting threads. Its theme is a repetitive nasal chant of just one word: "neglect". Does it haunt me this morning? No way. My first view of "the carpet" this morning reveals change. The splits in its threadbare ruts had in the past been covered with strips of bright yellow adhesive tape and even that tape had been peeling. Today there was a difference that brought a jaunt to my pre-existing bounce.

Before I tell you about the difference, you need to know why anyone would cover the carpet gashes with bright yellow tape. The holes could not be allowed to stay - they represented a tripping danger. Employee safety is extremely high on the director's agenda. It's not that he cares so much for us, otherwise he might actually approve the renovation budgets and we might get floor coverings that cover the floor. No, it's high in priority because of the new proactive workplace safety regulations (translated as "big fines if you don't preempt any ridiculously vague potential threat"). So why use canary colouring? Why have the carpet patches chirp at the corners of your vision? Because the engineers were pissed off with nothing being done about the carpet and wanted to draw attention to its state of decay.

Now, the difference that added the scoop of icecream to my effervescent mood lay in the solution to the problem of the peeling yellow tape. What do you do when your bright yellow "hey boss, I really need replacing" bandage has been in place for six months and itself is succumbing to the infection? You don't just replace the tape - you apply a different coloured tape to the edges of the peeling yellow tape to hold it down.

I chuckled onwards to my office. It doesn't take very much to make a day special.