Maggie!

One of my Sunshine neighbors, Maggie, works in one of the high-rise buildings in downtown Denver.  She leaves Sunshine around 6:30 in the morning, Monday thru Friday.  She drives down Sunshine Canyon Drive, thru Boulder and onto US 36, the Boulder Turnpike.  It’s still called the turnpike even though the toll booths were removed many years ago.  Her drive continues onto Interstate 25 and then on Spear Boulevard into Downtown Denver.  It is a 35 mile drive that takes about 55 minutes on a good day.

            Her office is on the 48th floor.  There are 35 people sharing the small space, crammed into small cubicles.  There is a large open space where all of the workers share three FAX machines and two copiers.  There is also a large bank of filing cabinets.  Maggie told me a story about an incident involving a mouse last week.  One of the file clerks opened a filing cabinet drawer and saw a mouse.  She jumped, uttered the appropriate shriek and slammed the drawer.  She immediately ran to her desk and called the building maintenance department to report the incident.

            Fifteen minutes later a maintenance worker appeared.  He checked every filing cabinet, inside and out.  He could not find the mouse.  The mouse was probably just as frightened as the clerk and left soon after the drawer slamming.  With other jobs to do, the maintenance worker asked the clerk to sign the work order “completed”.  The clerk refused, saying she wouldn’t sign until she saw him remove the mouse.  The maintenance worker said “Listen lady, the work order says ‘chase mouse’ not ‘produce mouse’ and I did that”.  The file clerk thought about it for a minute and then signed the work order.  The mouse hasn’t been seen since.

 

Smiles, David