One of my tasks on Friday was to run some components over to the guy who is laying out the new Hamster boards. This I don't mind at all. Stealing time, I took some detours on the way back to admire the gantry and find the other gate to the research facility. Moreover, the facility was very quiet on Friday; it being the day before a three-day weekend, many people were opting to make it a four-day weekend.
The electronics building is no exception. The guy to whom I'm delivering stuff is not at his desk and the other desk in that room is also not occupied, so I can't ask the girl who sits there if he's around at all. Not wanting to leave my components adrift on the morass of pens, papers, printouts, and other components on Bobby's desk, I dither around for a minute, but then I hear a rustling from behind The Barrier. This room is quite large, but is made cramped by its division down the center with a towering accretion of scrounged cubicle dividers (thus far I've noted the agency to be remarkably cubicle-free), filing cabinets, and storage cabinets plastered with mission stickers and small calendars bearing the logos of microchip manufacturers.
A-ha! I peek around The Barrier and spy a thin, pale man with a long, gray beard and a khaki driving cap. He's rustling papers at a desk partially hidden behind still more filing cabinets.
"Excuse me, is Bobby here today?" I ask.
He jumps a little and throws me an annoyed look. "Who?"
Uh— "Bobby? He sits at that desk right there?" I point at the desk in question. The desk right by the door that this man can't avoid seeing when he comes into the room, unless he does some creative face-shielding with his driving cap.
"I haven't seen him today." He returns his attention to his papers.
I am clearly dismissed. Okaaaay. I lift an unused post-it note from a pad on Bobby's desk and leave a note with the components, which I place on the copy of the Hamster layouts resting on the top of a heap of other printouts. I'll have to come back another day to check out the fascinating group dynamic here.
377 words | July 3, 2004 07:20 PM | Rocket science