With another day's leave hovering over me like a vulture over some carcass on the Serengeti I wondered what I could do to improve on the previous day's Englorie Park triumph. I decided to go to work. That's right, for a trip on my day off I went in to the office. The reason was simple. On the theory that no good disaster should be wasted my employers have taken advantage of the plague induced desertion of their offices to rearrange, rationalise and generally cut down on what must be a pretty impressive rent bill. To facilitate that they cordially invited their employees to reenter the offices and (I'm paraphrasing here) "get rid of all of your shit!"
Since we had originally fled the building so swiftly that some of us had left children behind you can appreciate that there was a fair bit to get rid of. At least I didn't have any infant skeletons to sweep up. There was one slight issue, the central business district of Sydney had recently been identified as a coronavirus hotspot. However the firm's redecorations brooked no delay. China Syndrome levels of decontamination were promised (or threatened) to encourage a thin stream of terrified wage slaves to slink into the building, toss their personal possessions into the nearest garbage bin and then flee while simultaneous smearing hand sanitiser over every exposed body part.
Oddly I was somewhat looking forward to it and not just for hand sanitiser smearing reasons. For starters it would mean I would get out of the flat without having to come up with half baked blog entry reasons and I would also get to visit my orchid that I hadn't seen for several months. I must give a special thanks to Anoma who has been grimly risking disease every day to come into the office, she has been tending to my orchid since I abandoned it in my haste to leave the plague zone and it looks quite healthy. It certainly looks quite healthy by comparison with me.
In response to my state government's urgings I have acquired some face masks and popped one on as I hopped onto the train. They are really quite annoying but I sat there gasping quietly while the other passengers moved as far away from me as possible. I've noted before how much more efficient our public transport service is now that almost nobody is using it. Everything is on time, clean (or cleanish) and the number of raving lunatics has decreased to almost tolerable levels. Unfortunately one of the remaining lunatics happened to be the train guard who insisted on trying to be funny. Unsuccessfully.
I was whisked with uncharacteristic efficiency through the inner suburbs of Sydney until the metal tube spat me out somewhere near Circular Quay (although not close enough to get wet) and I struck out for the Temple of Mammon that houses the high priests of my particular cult. Normally entry is a simple affair of a blood sacrifice and promising the eternal servitude of your first born but now I had to follow a piece of winding tape plastered to the floor which took me on a scenic tour of the foyer before dumping me outside the lift bay. Sanitiser was applied, my skin was scoured with acid (that wasn't mandatory, I requested it) and fingernail clippings were taken for placing in the family shrine in case I didn't survive the visit.
Fifty six levels above the decontamination zone I was greeted with more sanitiser and an invitation to sign a (no doubt thoroughly disinfected) clipboard confirming my presence of my own free will. That done I was permitted to proceed to my desk. For the first time in months I came face to face with one of my colleagues. She screamed and threw things at me until I backed off to what she considered a safe distance. Even so her body language indicated she would have been more comfortable if I had gone out the window.
With the pleasantries taken care of I set to work. After working for a while trying to sort the wheat from the chaff I just got a recycling bin and essentially shook my desk over it until it stopped rattling. Then I secured a handful of things I actually wanted to keep (vodka, nail polish remover and a small bust of a skull in a pilots hat, you know; the essentials) and tossed them into the nearest plastic container that didn't look as though it was destined for the next garbage skip out of town. Duty completed I bade farewell to my colleague but she was whimpering under her desk and didn't hear me.
The post script to this little sojourn into my workplace came a few days later when our partner in charge informed us that one of the people in the office that day had been in contact with someone suffering from COVID-19 and was currently undergoing testing. The office was to undergo a deep clean and the suggestion was that we might like to follow suit. Fortunately the person in question turned out to be free of disease so the only consequence was a widespread outbreak of hyperventilation on the part of those who had been present.
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