My office building is attached at one corner to another building. When the weather's bad or I'm feeling lazy, I cut through the other building on my way in or out of the office. The ground floor of the other building contains a bank and a coffee place. The bank has a rather odd, semi-open layout. The coffee place sits in a corner and is partially open to the bank. These two businesses are connected to one another and to the corridor leading to my building by several different entryways and open spaces.
Some of these openings are filled with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows. Some of them are not. The flooring is different in several places - some spots are tiled, some are polished smooth, some are carpeted. Where the flooring changes, there's some type of metal divider inlaid in the floor between the two different styles. The plate glass windows also have metal dividers at their base. And there are a few places, particularly in the corridor, where two large beams extend from the floor to the ceiling, with a metal divider running along the floor between them, but no plate glass window between the beams.
The result of all this opening and closing and flooring and windowing is that I can't tell where I'm going. The plate glass windows are sparkly clean, and particularly through my fuzzy eyes it is almost impossible to tell which spaces are blocked by windows and which offer free passage. I don't cross through the building often enough to remember this problem, or to have memorized a safe route. So each time I use this shortcut, it ends up taking me twice as long as the outside path because I have to pick my way slowly and carefully through the convoluted and confusing maze.
Yesterday, when it rained all day (despite my impassioned plea to the sun), I cut through the building on my way to lunch. I was navigating pretty well, I thought, and had almost reached the final set of doors, when I found myself only inches away from a plate glass wall. What caused me to pause before actually hitting the glass was a sudden glare bouncing into my eyes. Sheepish, I backed away and peered around until I found a clear way out.
Later, I realized that my crappy, glare-prone eyes had actually saved me from embarrassment or injury. Had the glare not stopped me in my tracks, I might have walked smack into (or, worse, through) the plate glass window. Thank heavens for small favors, I suppose.
Comments