The Day My Head Exploded

Was having dinner last evening with a client who has also become a friend and he mentioned that I sounded kinda muffled when we spoke on Friday. Also very distracted. Which is true. When he called, I was temporarily out of my mind with rage, and it took all I had to answer the phone like nothing was happening.

Water had been dripping from my office ceiling for 3 days. Now that's something you don't see every day in an office building. Sometimes gushing, sometimes just fat noisy drops, always from the same part of the air conditioning unit. It's just a happy coincidence that it wasn't dripping on my head or on my desk. Whilst asking my secretary to call the contractor to fix it, I got an aluminium tray and placed it on the floor below the drip, squarely blocking off my access from desk to door.

To cut a long and painful drama short, a series of "wrong contractors" trooped into my office, got on top of their ladders, made sympathetic noises and told me they were not the right contractors to fix the problem. In the meantime, I managed to fall over the tray twice, once when it was full thereby drenching my feet and shoes and personal belongings. After 3 days, I stormed out of my room in wet shoes and asked my secretary where the fuck is the contractor, only to have her look at me like I was losing it completely and why am I making so much noise over a small thing. I managed to get her to follow me into my office, a place I like to think she visits at least once a day, to look at the problem. She sees a drenched rug, a tray full of water, my wet shoes, wet papers, wet computer disks, follows my stony glare up to the ceiling where water is still dripping incessantly.

Oh! It's dripping!

If the contractors hadn't arrived that very minute, I might have had a heart attack. They covered my files, desk and shelves with tarp and proceeded to deal with the leak whilst I sat there at the computer, trying to work. Bits of insulation and ceiling board drifted down, together with some interesting metal bits and lots of dust. Secretary walked off.