While chatting with someone recently, I was reminded of a story from my past life. Until today, I never really thought about how funny it actually was. I was asked if I had ever worked in an office setting. My initial response was "no". Then I thought about it a bit. See, most of my jobs never kept me in an office all day...generally I would report in, and then head out on the road. This one particular job, I was a "Systems Engineer" for a medical paging company. This basically meant that I kept the network going 24 hours a day.

I think I worked there for around six or seven years. It was a small branch office of around six people. There was one large room with cubicles, and one main office with a view and a door. This branch had an office manager, secretary, a regional boss man, a few sales reps and myself. I was definitely viewed as the low man on the totem poll because of my seniority and "tech" status. Techs always got a bad rap.

The main company had a corporate headquarters in Plano TX, with branch offices all over the country. When I first started, the company was organized and doing well...but within a few years it began to orphan the Cleveland office where I worked. Like many companies, employees would come and go, and ours was no exception. About two years in, the regional "boss man" left, leaving the private office open. I don't think the door had hit his backside yet, before the remaining vultures employees started fantasizing of greener office pastures. Knowing no one else in the office had the brass ones that I did, I decided to make my move. I gathered all my stuff, rearranged the furniture, removed all the unnecessary paperwork from the desk (except for the personnel files of everyone), and moved in. After the first week of gasps died down, the remaining five years I occupied the office was pretty straight forward. lol!

The funny part was when corporate bigwigs would come into town and sheepishly ask to borrow MY private office for meetings or interviews. I used to chuckle when I would hear the president of the company mumble to someone "who is this guy again?". I also used to love when the office secretary would knock on my door, peek in, and tell me I had visitors.

What also made it even more entertaining, and probably puckered a few rear ends, was...I would roll in at around 8:30, sit and read the paper until around 11:00, and then go home for the day. Thus, leaving MY office vacant while others could only dream of having such nice digs.