We have to watch a video presentation about safety and organization culture. The culture bits pretty much confirm for me that, yes, I have found my people. With the lights low, we sit in one of the labs where there's a TV connected to the base channel. Office Extrovert dozes off. I try not to giggle at the PowerPoint parts of the video, with un-readably absurd quantities of text pasted onto each slide. The lecturer makes sure to warn us how PowerPoint is used to manipulate the viewer through the selective inclusion of information.
We have a mandatory safety presentation that I mostly manage to miss. The conference room is full by the time I get there, so I stand and sit with a few other stragglers out in the hall. The theme of the day is ergonomics and we grumble about how this floor we're sitting on isn't ergonomic at all. OE dozes off again.
Later, on the stairs, I pass some other people who have another mandatory safety meeting that I don't know about so it must not be mandatory for me. I'm carrying my lunch, cornbread and a container of blackeye peas with okra and greens.
As if he's got extra gravity pulling him back, one hauls himself hand over hand up the railing. "It's like—you can't make yourself go."
"You should be using the handrail," the other says to me. Grinning, he points at one of the multiple "Use handrail" signs that decorate every staircase.
I free one hand by placing the edge of the plastic bag that holds my cornbread between my teeth. "'ike dis?"
"Yeah."
We're also supposed to clean our labs. Since I cleaned mine when I moved in a few weeks ago, I don't bother. I have to say, however, that I'm about to get buried under all the manuals I don't have time to read. I suppose there is some point to the cleaning activity. But guess who else had to clean? Yes, I have seen the surface of Dr. Science's desk! And the heap of trash boxes outside his door (If we have trash that doesn't go into the wastebaskets, we have to put it in boxes, tape the boxes shut, and label them "TRASH").
375 words | June 23, 2004 08:22 PM | Rocket science