Work Stories: Episode 59: Raise the Roof

Previously on Work Stories, I wrote about playing Nintendo at work.  I’m not sure why I thought that would turn out to be a good story.  It clearly wasn’t.  I didn’t care though.  Sometimes you get not so great stories, but that’s because not all stories are great.  I can’t write great things every week.  Sometimes the stories I tell are things that amuse me and only me.  Sometimes they doesn’t even amuse me.  I’m using the word “sometimes” a lot, aren’t I?  You’re probably asking when I’ll stop ranting about the quality of last week’s post and get into the quality writing that I’m sure to have this time around.  I cannot guarantee any quality in what I am about to write because I rarely can.  It’ll be interesting to see how this week’s post turns out.  Let’s get to it.  How about that?

This week’s Work Story is actually something that happened last week.  I’m going to warn you right now that it probably won’t be interesting, but there is a chance that it could be better than last week’s Work Story.  It won’t take too long to tell the story as there isn’t much to it.  I’ll try and stretch it into something interesting so that this wasn’t a waste of time for you to read.  Here goes.

I’m still working at a museum.  That hasn’t changed at all.  There isn’t a lot going on in the winter at the museum.  It’s a lot of sitting around and noticing things that need to be fixed.  When you don’t have a lot to do, you notice more lights that are burnt out, more displays that need serious cleaning, and more things that are just plain broken.  It’s a lack of legitimate work that leads to finding the little things that you wouldn’t notice were it busier.

When sitting at the cash register last week, I noticed that one of the ceiling tiles in our lobby ceiling had come loose.  I’m going to need to explain what that means.  It’s not like a typical ceiling with tiles that slide easily into and out of place.  Our lobby ceiling is made of metal tiles that snap in and out of place.  So when one is hanging down, it can lead to a dangerous situation.  Were it to fall, that’s a metal tile that could hit somebody on the head or something.  It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

My bright idea was to try and fix it myself without calling the maintenance people.  It seems easier to do things that way.  It’s why I like knowing how to get into all of the displays myself.  It’s why I figured out how to fix our sliding doors.  It’s why I change lights.  We don’t like to call up the maintenance guys if we don’t need to.  So I walked up to where the tile was and attempted to push it back into place.  When it looked like it had snapped back into place, I started to walk away.

Now remember what I said about the tile falling and hitting someone in the head?  That comes from experience.  The tile might have looked like it had gone back into its proper place, but it hadn’t.  When I started walking away from the tile, it fell and hit me right in the head.  It wasn’t anything serious, luckily.  It was only a minor bump on the head.  I get worse by simply walking around my house.  Hell, I’ve gotten worse injuries at work.  I’ve smashed my head off of a hand dryer while changing the garbage.  I’ve slipped on ice outside.  I’ve burned myself on a lightbulb.  I’ve walked into benches.  I’m an accident prone person who has miraculously never broken a bone.  Getting hit on the head with a ceiling tile is nothing.

I picked the ceiling tile up off of the floor and walked back to our ticket booth.  I put it beside the cash register and waited for maintenance to eventually come down for something else.  One ceiling tile isn’t that important when it is already out of the ceiling.  The tile stayed there for a few days before anybody put it back where it was supposed to go.  And everyone lived happily ever after.

That’s it for this week’s Work Story.  It might be on par with what I gave you last week, but I feel better about it.  I’m going to assume that means that it’s a better Work Story.  I hope you enjoyed the 750ish words that I’ve written so far.  It was very easy to write because I’m just relaying things that have happened to me throughout the Work Stories.  Next week I’ll write some more words about my experiences at work.  I hope you’ll join me then.

Until then, it's like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there's this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it.