Party hearty

The building where I work has two atria, one spanning floors 6 through 8, and the other spanning floors 9 through 11. The internal staircases in these spaces were designed to resemble the double helix of DNA, and they’re rather cool:

The down side of these areas is the noise level, if you happen to have an office opening into them, because they’re basically just big-old sound chambers. But if you don’t mind that, they’re impressive meeting venues.

On 30 June, an email went out to everyone at the atrium end of the ninth floor, advising us that they were in fact going to hold a retirement party there yesterday:

What is interesting is that we were being given notice that a noisy party was going to take place and:

a) We weren’t invited to it

b) If we thought we might find the noise distracting, we should anticipate it and not noticeably close them off, because that might look like we were raining on their good time

As it happened, I did close my door when they started setting up beforehand, but when I heard the bluegrass music, I quietly opened it, because it wasn’t bad. To my discomfort, I discovered that the musicians had set up almost directly in front of me, and therefore all the audience were staring into my office. And the CEO happened to be right next to it, and he leaned in to comment, “You didn’t think you were going to work, did you?”

Please, God—let this week be over.