The doors update

My office has one of those high security doors which can only be opened with key card, keys, tv-camera phone-like-device in the office, and anyone leaning hard enough on them. This last bit was a bit worrying, so someone in the hierarchy called the company that installs these doors to come and take a look at it. So two weeks ago, a grey haired guy appears and starts to take our door apart. Since we only work in the office, and he was, strictly speaking, working outside our office, everyone decided that he was Somebody Else's Problem. This grey haired guy continued to fiddle with the door until lunchtime, when he explained (to random person passing by, in this case, me) that he has to call other guys, and that the problem is going to be solved tomorrow. The door could not be closed any more.
Next day, three more persons appear and start fiddling with the door (mainly trying to slam it close as hard as possible to see if that would lock them). After some time, they gave up and left saying that they need to call the chief master repairmen guy, who is going to come tomorrow and definitively solve the problem. The door still couldn't be closed.
The following day that grey haired person appears again, starts to fiddle with the door. After slamming it really hard a few times, he proclaims (to the random person passing by, in this case, again me) that the problem is in the tiny delicate spring mechanism in the lock, probably broken because "someone was slamming the door too hard". He takes apart the lock, starts shaking his head, puts most of the pieces back together and leaves.
Nobody else appeared next day, or ever after.
The door still can't be closed, and as added bonus, anyone who tries to open the door is left standing with the door handle in his hand.

Monday Shmonday

Life in my home country of Elbonia is strange and mystifying, especially when it relates to work habits of us, native Elbonians. If you listen to us speak, we spend enormous amounts of time working, usually for incompetent bosses imported from neighbouring country Crotoboltavia (world famous for its ancestral Elbonian wild mountain tribes and such fashion statements as white socks with suits and black shoes). If you actually visit Elbonia, you are going to find that all the coffeehouses seem to be full of the people, all the time, and that all of them claim to be on a short coffee break from their incompetent Crotoboltavian bosses. Of course, although incompetent, Crotoboltavians are crafty montagnards and quite often spend the whole day searching for their employees - usually by going from coffeehouse to coffeehouse themselves.

Some of us are lucky, and work for government companies, agencies, departments and the rest of the metastasizing kafkian apparatus of state. For us, the whole work question is quite irrelevant, especially when compared to really important issues like whether the weekly allotment of toilet paper arrived, who bought which of the daily newspapers (and of course, coordination issues for prevention of duplication of effort when buying or reading the same), whose turn is it to spend time and patience convincing the corner coffee machine to produce some liquid almost totally, but not quite, different then the coffee you asked for, etc, etc..

For example, I recently transferred into a new office, quite a bit higher up in the hierarchy of government. This office is part of a highly secretive and paranoid part of state apparatus, witch uses staggering security measures (quite alien to our easy-going Elbonian ways) such as security cards for opening doors, no coffee machines* in hallways and actual internal camera system. Because this is a secretive state apparatus, all the employees are required to wear suits (or for women, whatever haute mode is current) and black mirror glasses, which makes them highly inconspicuous in the middle of the military complex where the offices are situated. It also makes them highly inconspicuous on any public event which they, by the nature of their job, have to attend. To remind my foreign readers, in Elbonia men traditionally wear sweats, white socks and black leather jackets in public.

There also seems to exist a slight problem with the security cards for all the exterior and interior doors. These were part of a system inherited from previous inhabitants of that office building - a local HQ of an UN peacekeeping mission. This ancient technology (early 90s) in the meantime lost all of its accompanying manuals, most of the security cards themselves as well as the means to make new ones. So this secretive group of government officials is forced to wait around entrance and interior doors until the lucky card-bearer appears, all the time, of course, acting inconspicuously. Some enterprising individuals have in the mean time discovered alternative means of opening doors - it seems that card readers sometimes react positively to various pieces of colored paper, personal ID cards, and in at least one observed case, a briefcase.

You can imagine the scene: a small group of suits waits around entrance to an old building, pretending that they are just passing by or smoking a cigarette, while all the time watching actions of an unlucky individual who tries to open the door by waving various implements at it. When the door opens, everybody rushes in, while from the opposite side their mirror images try to rush out. Confusion ensues, confusion resolves, the doors close with ominous click, while one last unlucky late individual (running at breakneck speed) hits the door and slides down semiconscious, starting the whole cycle again.
Repeat the scene on every interior wing door.


* This problem was solved by putting all the coffee machines in the stairwell. Of course, that solution just compounded the problem with doors.