The Aerie
The Steve Miller Band (and it's a sad blog that opens with "The Steve Miller Band") sang "Time keeps on slippin' into the future." My time doesn't slip into the future, unless the future is at the bottom of a greased luge chute.
I was reminded of this today when I went to work. First I forgot my badge. Whatever their other failings, my client takes the trappings of security seriously, and so the guard desk tried to call my supervisor to let me in. She was not in. Neither was my team lead. Neither was the guy across the aisle from me. In fact, nobody was in.
I knew this, of course, because this is the week that everyone with whom I work is at SANS Las Vegas, leaving me, the lonely contractor. to hold down the fort.
With no one to let me into the building, I suggested that I could just zip home for my badge. The guard was surprised, but that's because few of my fellow employees live within only a couple of miles of downtown (although one fellow lives across the street in an apartment building - a bit too close to work in my opinion). For most employees, a trip home is a 90 minute (at least) round trip to the suburbs.
But I went home grabbed my badge, dropped of this week's check at the bank, and was back in half an hour. I waved at the guard, passed my badge in front of the sensor, and set off all the alarms as I tried to walk through the door.
When the ringing subsided I returned to the guard desk. He waved my badge in front of HIS sensor. Worked fine. The picture on the badge looked just like me (poor sod). He suggested calling my supervisor until I reminded him I was the guy from half an hour ago.
Now possessed of my malfunctioning badge, he at least had some indication that I had some business being in the building, or else i was a skilled and particularly brash forger. So he handed me a temporary badge and let me in, advising me to take my real badge to the security office.
Now, like I said, my client takes security seriously. The security office is hidden behind double-thick bulletproof one-way glass in the sub-basement, behind a sliding door with a camera and a speakerphone. The creepiest part isn't when you have to push the button and ask to be let in: the creepiest part is when you don't have to because the door slides open as you approach... they're watching you. It makes me nervous that sometime I'll be sitting in the bathroom stall and a little hatch will open and dispense a new roll, while a tinny voice says "Noticed you were out."
I handed my badge through the slot beneath the imposing black pane of the security booth. A moment later a voice said, "It's expired."
"What?"
"Your badge, it was for six months, and it expired today."
Wow. I've been on this contract for six months. Six months. My kids are six months older. I'm six months older. Everything is six months older.
I'm not ungrateful. The buzzards of credit were circling when this job arrived to carry my mutilated finances off the battlefield where they had been abandoned. Only now, six months later, is my bank account coming out of the coma, and there are months of painful rehab ahead.
But wow, six months. I was on the other side of the solar system when I started this contract. I'm coming up on having held this contract longer than I held some jobs.
I'm glad I've got the work, and my finances are recovering. Just wish time wasn't slipping away so fast...
Posted by Albatross at October 4, 2004 10:19 PM