Suzy Says

In order to complain, I’m going to have to make a confession. That’s enough of an incentive for me to admit that I have been something of a slacker lately, arriving at work after the appointed hour of 6 am.

Before 6:00, everyone, no matter what floor they work on, has to use their card key to gain access to their floor. You can push the button a zillion times, and it won’t light up or let you go there without your magic card key being swiped in front of the elevator’s tiny, baleful red eye. Now, my firm enforces this rule until 7:30 on all three of the floors we occupy, which is when the receptionist arrives. So this means you have to use your card key if you arrive any time before the magic hour (or half hour) of 7:30.

However, of the four elevators that go to my floor – it’s a tall building, so the floors are divided in lots of ten – only two have card key readers. So if one of the illterate elavtors arrives first, I can’t take it, however much I want to. Here’s what I don’t understand. It appears that only 2 of the 4 elevators are operating at any given time, so why not make them both the ones with the readers? Especially since my firm occupies a third of the floors that bank of elevators services. I don’t get it. So I have to wait around, filled with resentment, until one of the magic elevators can whisk me up for my day of honest toil.

Here’s another thing that drives me crazy. I get on and press 15. Other people pile on and press floors much higher than mine, then stand right in front of the doors, even when they open at my floor. I have to ask them to move. They know perfectly well they aren’t the first one off, so why stand there? And why stand there after the doors have opened, when you know you aren’t getting out? These idiots should exclusively ride the illiterate elevators.

And finally: people wearing so much perfume in an enclosed space that innocent bystanders like me can actually taste it. This morning, it was a woman wearing my least favorite perfume, Calvin Klein’s ultra-revolting Eternity (so named beacsue you can smell it and taste it for, you guessed it, an eternity), which John assures me smells exactly like the urinal cakes used in men’s rooms. I have to take his word on that one. And the only thing worse than the stinky perfume is the horrible ghostly reek of the McDonald’s someone has taken up to their floor to torment their co-workers with. *shudder*

Such are the petty annoyances of a petty girl who works in an office in a big city.