Boxes and Tape

It’s midnight. I’m sitting in this office for the last time. The last box is packed; tomorrow I begin working in our new building, a fresh start. I threw out reams of documents. Some in the garbage and some in the shredder. Almost four years of meeting minutes, action plans, punch lists, travel folders, manufacturer product info, project files, lawyer’s briefs, outdated correspondence. I kick back and take in the bare walls, empty file cabinets and shelves. So many hours spent here. Building some things and breaking others. Receiving customer compliments and their harassment. Listening to employees personal tragedies. Deaths of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and children too. Heart attacks, cancer, hit-runs on the street. Listening to the joys: births of new babies, pictures of weddings, and tort in office just because it’s their birthday. Making big decisions and trivial ones. Hiring and starting careers. Firing and ending them. Trying to get a customer to sign a big contract. Listening to vendors trying to get me to sign their big contracts. Doing the “inspection dance” with the parade of inspectors in green polyester and fraying epaulets spewing their bile about how they can write the results (the protocol) one way or the other depending on “the weight of your arguments”. In this office I’ve been recorded without my knowledge, and blackmailed with said recording. My life has been threatened and guns have been “shown” to me. Lately, knowing that I’m moving to a brand new office I’ve pegged this office as a “shithole”. Well I need to retract that. It’s not a shithole. The things I experienced in this office are an important, indelible part of me. I'm done now: my business life neatly packed in boxes and tape. Adios.