Last week sometime I had to go over to the university to do some paper work, and I decided while I was there to check my mailbox and to walk over to my office to look for a book, I think it was. So I get there—to the office—and I see the door to the office next to mine is open, and I go in to razz my colleague for being a trouble maker for complaining about “salary compression.”
So we talk for a bit and then somebody else comes in and we talk about salary compression, and somebody else comes in and we talk about that some more, and another guy walks by and says it’s good to see me (I haven’t been around that much). But then my colleague has to go to class, so I go to my office. And…hmmm…the door is closed. I thought I had unlocked and opened it. But I decide what the hell do I need to go in there for, because I can’t remember why I had wanted to go into it. Maybe just to see if it was still there, because nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors.
But maybe I had some reason to go in, and so I decide to go in to see if the room will remind me about why I wanted to go into it. So I start looking for my keys to get in the office since the door is locked. So I check this pocket and then that, and I think I have the keys but it turns out to be the damn cell phone, and then I think I have them but that turns out to be change. So I check my back pocket because once in a blue moon I put them there. But no dice, I am coming up empty.
So, I think, damn! And go back to my colleague’s office and ask her if she has seen any keys around, and she says no and I look around and don’t see any and she has a pretty neat office. Damn. So maybe I went and locked my keys in my office because I do that once every 15 years. And then I wonder where my coffee cup is and realize it must be in the office too. I am pretty sure I had my coffee cup with me since I walk around like it is attached to my arm. But I decide to check my colleague’s office again, and looking around I see my coffee cup!
So I get that and my colleague leaves to go to class and I figure damn! I am going to have to go to the main office to get somebody to let me into my office so I can get my keys. This is embarrassing and I don’t know what time it is and wonder if it’s the lunch hour already. That means nobody will be there and I will stuck standing in the corridor for an hour waiting to get somebody to let me in my office, and I am already irritated and aggravated even before I start over to the main office to get somebody to let me into my office so I can get my keys so I can go home.
So hanging my head and all grumpy I start down the corridor to go to the main office and I walk by an office with the door open and the keys hanging out of the lock. And I think I will have to tell the person their keys are in the lock, and so I look in the office and realize: It is my office! For the past five or ten minutes I have been trying to get into the wrong office! I feel sort of chagrined and look around to see if anybody has noticed me finding my own office.
I don’t know what happened. I guess when I walked out of my colleague’s office I turned left when I should have turned right. The story had a happy ending because I found my own office, but this sort of thing has been happening too much lately, making me wonder just how tired I am really deep down.
