Stupid Office Tricks

Once upon a time, they refurbished the office where I worked. It was lovely; shades of blue and grey, pot plants, the works. And flash, modern lighting, bright, airy, headache-preventing. Helpfully, it was controlled by motion detectors. These were placed all over the ceiling, ensuring that the merest movement by anyone in the room would keep the lights ticking over. Quietly working at one's desk wasn't sufficient, unfortunately, so you occasionally saw people waving one hand absent-mindedly above them to ensure a continuous supply of photons.

This did not work, however, for someone sitting quietly at my desk, which had been neatly triangulated at a point midway between three of the detectors. I was often the last to leave the building, and, five minutes after the second to last person left, the lights would go out. I'd absent-mindedly wave an arm. Nothing would happen. I'd wave both arms. Darkness. I'd stand up and fling my arms around. The detectors were as oblivious as if I'd just tried to ask for the bill. Eventually, I'd get up and wander around, and be rewarded with sufficient light to work for a further five minutes.

It's pure coincidence that this issue reaches people two days before Novacon.

I began to wonder if I was actually a laboratory rat in some fiendish mental experiment. It certainly made it hard to get any work done. I decided that lateral thinking was called for. I realised that what I needed to do was produce motion nearer to the motion detectors. I looked around. There was an empty can of Coke on my desk. The lights went out. I reached for the can in the dark and threw it at the detector. "Fiat Lux," I cried. The lights came on. Five minutes later, they went off again, but this time I'd run out of litter.

Something more permanent was needed. I attached a string to a filing cabinet on the other side of the room, and took the other end of it to my desk, and waved it vigorously when the lights went out. It didn't work; it clearly wasn't visible enough. So I tied a load of shiny sweet wrappers to it, as chaff. It looked rather like a kite tail when I was finished. That did the trick; and during the day, I just rolled it up and left it sitting on top of the filing cabinet. When everyone else left the office, I'd unroll it and leave the free end on my desk, and by giving it a good shake regularly, ward off the powers of darkness. Of course, the motion detectors weren't all bad. They did have one clear benefit; if you walked down a long corridor, the lights would come on as you walked, as if you were a character in a dodgy SF movie. Well worth all those hours of sitting in the dark flapping your arms, really.

--Alison Scott