From the Archives: June 04, 2004 - Age 28

I was out the door by 7:30a, needing to get to Pfizer early to correct a major fuck-up that was hanging over my head.

The back-story: It has been my job since last week to prepare everything required for an important 25-person training session held by one of my executives. Yesterday I was putting the final touches on everything, setting up the conference room, confirming the food delivery, finding flipcharts and markers, setting up the A/V equipment, and so on. It was at about 4:30p that I realized that the Facilities Department had failed to deliver the 10 chairs I had ordered for the conference room. No problem, I thought, I’ll just give ‘em a call. The thing was, was that the Facilities Department closes at 4:30p. They have no voicemail. I began to panic, seeing that the meeting started at 8:30a the next morning. I was also filled with a sense of irony, in that I was at the receiving end of a Facilities mistake. (If you’ll remember, my 5-month tenure at Sotheby’s was in the Facilities Department, and if someone asked for chairs, they got ‘em.)

So, here is the picture: a perfectly set up conference room, the tables in order and everything in place, all of which meant nothing because there was no way for the attendees to sit down. Never before have I more clearly understood the value of a chair. So, I ran around and stole chairs from other conference rooms (which I was strongly instructed NOT to do), hoping that I could get to the office early enough in the morning to get a hold of Facilities, have the chairs delivered, and return the chairs to their proper conference rooms—all before 8:30a.

So this morning I was speed-walking down Bleecker Street to the subway station, my brain working frantically to decide the course of action to take in each potential situation that might arise. The streets were nearly empty, save a few elderly people walking their dogs and a garbage truck stopping intermittently to pick up dumpsters. I saw a school bus pick up some kids on the corner of Mercer—something I had never observed before. At Broadway the Hey How Ya’ll Doin’ Homeless Guy said “good morning” to me and I returned the gesture. He was just setting up his egg crate. In a sense, we were doing the same thing—both of us going to work.

But back to the story. So, I rocketed up to Grand Central, walked over to Pfizer, and just as I hit the 205 building, I noticed with a frantic grappling at my pants pocket that somehow I had lost my ID. DRAT! I cannot remember if I mentioned it in a previous entry, but the security is Fort Knox tight here. I went into the building anyway, and pleaded with the security guard to let me in.

“Do you remember me, I’m temping on the 3rd floor?”
“Sure, I remember you,” he said.
“Can you let me up, I forgot my ID.”
“No sir, you’ll have to get a new pass.”
“Even if you remember me?”
“Even if I remember you.”
“What if someone comes in who knows me. Can they let me up?”
He thought for a minute. “Sure, you can do that.”
“Great.”

So, I went outside and waited by the revolving doors in the hopes that someone would come along to save the day. Sure enough, in 5 minutes someone did come along, the very man who was leading the meeting that I was trying to get upstairs to set up for.

“Why are you here so early?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, just making sure everything is set up okay,” I answered.

So, up we went, and I was off to the races. I got Facilities on the line right away, and knowing how to deal with them, got the chairs upstairs in 5 minutes. Fuck-up averted. World saved. Still, one important point of interest remained—whatever happened to my ID card?

Later, when I caught my breath and had a little free time, I instant messaged Shawn and asked her if I had left my pass at the apartment.

“Well, sort of,” she replied.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, I found your ID in the toilet.”
“How did it get THERE?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing!”