Get Lost

Around Thanksgiving at work, the Powers That Be moved my group from the 9th floor to the 10th floor (where all the executives live). So I've been in my new digs for what? A month and a
half? You'd think I'd know my way around by now. Uh uh.

Today I finally fell into old-habit mode and sent my print to the mainframe printer on the 9th floor and had to go down there to fetch it. I took the elevator down, grabbed my print, and headed up the stairs. Operating on autopilot: Out of the stairwell. Through the door. Turn left and around the corner. Down a ways and turn into my cubicle. Only it had somebody else's name on it. Somebody I've never even heard of.

It wasn't just a case of turning an aisle too soon or too late. I had no idea where I was (other than on the 10th floor). I looked down the main walkway, and all the cubicle walls were pristine, not like where I sit, where the walls have smoked-plastic mail slots hanging off them.

Of course, the answer was to Keep Going, which I did. I passed Administrative Assistants whose faces I recognized from the Break Room, but who I had never seen in their natural habitat. I passed fishbowl offices adorned with names I knew as the ones that get spoken in hushed tones. The very air in the executive area radiated the message, "You don't belong here...."

I kept going. I didn't belong there.

After turning another corner and going halfway down, I saw a name I knew. Filled with renewed confidence, I found my cubicle and got back to work.

It's hard to say what the problem is, exactly. Put me inside a building, and I'm completely disoriented. I have to look out a window and find landmarks, or I have no idea which way I'm facing. So I have no assurance this won't happen again.

But that's okay. I've gotten used to getting lost. The trick is to keep going in circles until I find my way home.