There’s all this construction going on in my building. Sweaty guys with muscle tee tans mingle with the business casual types in the elevators, their bare arms standing out among all the light blue shirtsleeves.
One of the men working out on the roof wears an Oakland A’s cap every day, and a matching red safety harness every day since someone in the building questioned the safety practices of the construction workers. Now all of the guys wear red or yellow harnesses with carabineers hooked in to the hefty mesh loops at the back. At the end of the day, the Oakland fan unfastens the buckles on his harness lets it fall from his hips. He steps out of it and slings it up off the tarred roof by the carabineer, drops it in a heap of tools and leftover scraps of metal and cement that the crew will leave out overnight. I have yet to see any type of restraint clipped into one of those carabineers.
So, the men still drape themselves over the edge of the building, stretching beyond the safety netting like it’s just getting in the way, craning above bare iron rods that are waiting to be dressed in cement and could easily three-hole punch a human body that dropped on top of them. Just, now they’re doing it while wearing harnesses, snug, over their faded, frayed jeans.
My manager can’t understand a thing the construction guys say. Once, he spoke to the one in the Oakland A’s cap, commenting on his aerial feats, suggesting that he might want to be careful out there on the eaves of the 21st floor. Oakland didn’t express any confusion, just beamed and said, “Yeah, bro” and then, apparently, tilted his head in my direction.
“I have absolutely no idea what that meant,” my boss said later, “so I just said, ‘Yeah, yeah‘ back but I was really like ‘Okay.’ It’s quite possible that he has asked for your hand.”
“Too bad I’m a Yankees fan,” I tell him, even though I’ve always kind of liked the idea of a love based on a rivalry.
To protect the carpeting, there is a layer of industrial seran wrap down on the floor. Footsteps on the plastic sounds like bubbles popping in a sheet of bubblewrap. The best is when the mail cart comes, because with all four wheels rolling down the hall, it sounds like someone’s dragging a body down a strip of bubblewrap laid out like a red carpet.
The sound reminds me of this website, Virtual Bubblewrap, which a coworker forwarded to me once when everyone in the office was stressing out. That sort of confused me because usually when I’m really stressed out at work, fondling plastic isn’t what I want to do. What I want to do is wrap plastic around my face and secure with packaging tape. At least bubblewrap would cushion the impact, should I ever decide to jump off the twenty-first floor.
But I’ve got no reason to consider doing so; just plenty of reasons to sit tight here at my desk. One of them is perched on the balustrade outside my window, singing a spanish song that I don’t know and wearing an Oakland A’s cap.
Leave a Reply