The Fly...

I know what a fly feels like when he lands on fly paper...

Back in February, they disassembled the cube farm outside my office, pulled up all the carpet and installed new carpet squares. These were supposed to be great because if one square got stained or worn, you could peal it up and replace it, without disturbing it's neighbors, the desks or have to replace the whole carpet again. And believe me, after 13 years that old carpet needed to be replaced. Once they were done, office installed brand new cubes, providing more seating then before. Sounded great...

About 3 months later we all noticed that something wasn't quite right. The squares were starting to curl up. Our operations manager said that when the carpet was made, they recycled the backing material, in an effort to be "green". Unfortunately, some silicon contaminated the rubber backing. And you know what silicon is used for, to provide lubrication or... (wait for it...) a non stick surface. The problem is that in this case, they wanted a "stick" surface. Because the carpet squares were pealing up, people were tripping on them... people carrying computers were tripping on them... not good.

Even better, we weren't the only office to be carpeted with that particular lot of carpet squares. Two other offices in St Petersburg were in the same situation. The solution, pull up all the carpet and redo it. To do that, at least in our case, they had to remove all those new cubes first.

Tuesday and Wednesday we spent time moving all the people in the farm out of their cubes (again), and into other seating. Thursday, the cube installer returned, disassembled all the cubes and stacked them to one side off the carpet. They had to do it, or it would void the warranty. It took them about 6 hours. Now the interesting thing is that with the cubes removed we all noticed the "new" 8 month old carpet squares looked like they were about 8 years old, very worn and faded where people sat. Strike two for this batch of carpet. Friday morning, starting at 8:00 am, a crew removed all the old carpet. I can say with certainty at this point... it wasn't the carpet glue that was bad.

I had enough foresight to wear sneakers on Friday. I thought about it before work. If I'd worn my Birkenstocks, they would still be over by the entry to cube farm, stuck in the glue. Even with sneakers on, the glue threatened to pull off my shoes... People who wore flops were walking out of their shoes. It was an amusing sight, actually, watching them struggle to keep their shoes on their feet. More people had worn flops then not.

Think of walking through a puddle of dried sugar. You know, someone dropped a popsicle on the sidewalk two days ago, and you walked through the remains and your shoes feel like they are sticking to the ground. Now imagine that 10 times stronger... no, 20 or more times stronger. To get to my office I have to walk, at a minimum, 30 feet across this glue. What's more, like that stickiness from the popsicle sugar stays on your shoes for a little while, and so was this glue. It's the stick that keeps on sticking. Next thing I know, I'm sticking to the tile, my office carpet and everywhere else I walk..., skerch, skerch, skerch... you can hear me coming. And it hasn't come off yet, two days later. I drove home barefoot on Friday, because even though I scrapped, scuffed and shuffled my way to the car, it wasn't coming off any time soon and I didn't want it on my pedals.

This weekend the carpet company is supposed to re-lay all the carpet. The cube installers are supposed to be back on Monday to reassemble the "farm". Then everyone is supposed to move back to their appointed places. I hope that is the case, because walking on that glue is been super annoying. None of us thought they wouldn't start laying the new carpet as soon as they pulled the old carpet up and I didn't figure they would pull the carpet until they were ready to start re-laying it. Silly me.

I think the carpet company may have realized their mistake, or at least they were aware of it, in pulling the carpet up on Friday Morning, instead of stay... Friday afternoon. About 3:30 I noticed a strange woman struggling across the glue in backless pump-style shoes. From the door of my office I asked if she was looking for someone. "Nope, I'm from the carpet company. I'm just bring up this box..." which she then decided to toss to the side by the wall, into the glue, and head back the way she'd come. I couldn't help but smirk as I watched her struggle to turn around, and make her way back to the edge of the glue without loosing her shoes. 15 feet and about 3 minutes later she made it. All the while looking like a fly caught on sticky paper.