Locked Out Inside

The offices at Arkadia Jazz/View Video were nothing short of dumpy as I've previously referenced in other posts. The space itself was layed out such that it's design was somewhere between thoughtless bachelor pad and storage. The mismatched furniture, character-less decor and 2nd rate office equipment made it look as though this wasn't really an office but more like a storage space where another better looking (and better designed) office had decided to store its cast-offs. In fact when visitors got off the elevator at our office there was no receptionist to greet them. Instead, visitors were greeted by a blank wall and a long hallway going off in either direction. Sometimes they would hesitatingly call out "Helllooo..?????" when getting off the elevator.

After 3 years of this cluttered and overcrowded space, Bob Karcy, our CEO hired Doris Schultz a self-proclaimed change agent and small-time management guru. Doris, was surprisingly given free reign to re-design the office, re-examine some of Bob's management processes and even our organizational stucture. One of Doris'first initiatives was to set about re-building and making over our space. She brought in a contractor to fit-out a small studio as her office and asked him to re-paint and make other structural changes to the space. This contractor was not a large firm but an independent with a small staff assisting him. In fact, he often came to the office alone. In fact, Doris helped this contractor (whose name was Troy) with much of the actual work. This work went on for many weeks and eventually we began to see some progress. Doris' office was shaping up nicely and we were shopping for proper, functional office furniture that we could acquire second-hand.

This particular night after working late, I left Troy alone. I was often the last to leave but Bob had told me not to be concerned with leaving Troy alone in our space. I could do so at any time, giving him free reign to work as late as he wanted after hours. Our building was only 6 floors and probably almost 100 years old with Arkadia occupying 2 of the 6 floors. The building had probably never been fully renovated and much of its structure and systems were quite antiquated. The building was without a doorman or much security of any kind so keys were required to enter the building, enter the floor off of the elevator and a numeric code was required once the elevator doors opened on our floor. None of these security measures (however simple) required any real technical knowledge. Just awareness. This issue of awareness became a problem for Troy working late on our office one night. Having been working with paint and plaster for much of the night and not wanting to track either all over our carpet, Troy removed his shoes. When he left our space on the 3rd floor to access his gear and supplies that he was keeping on our 6th floor he forgot one minor detail. His keys to our offices. So when he got on the elevator to get up to the 6th floor he quickly discovered that he wasn't going anywhere. Try as he might, neither of our floors worked for him without a key their default setting being "locked" after hours. Essentially trapped on our elevator in the middle of the night with no where to go - and no shoes on his feet - Troy really had only one option. Go home. And go home is exactly what he did. Leaving all of his work out overnight, his radio on and with both his shoes and his keys in Doris' office, Troy walked barefoot down the sidewalk and to the Brooklyn-bound 4 train to home. What a strange sight this guy must have been to other subway riders - a skinny, slight black man of carribean descent covered in plaster and paint riding the subway - with no shoes. I assume his wife or someone let him in when he got home but I always thought that this story was one of the most extreme cases of being locked out of somewhere.