office cleaning observations
Dec. 9th, 2024 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itrytobe1.
This part of the city was not made for people. It is the output of a terrain generator with a limited set of assets – asphalt, cars, parking space, box-shaped office, box-shaped garage, chain-link fence, more cars – and set to randomise. There are no humans.
2.
Heaters blaze all night. The radio sings to no one, briefly, between the advertising. Spotless unused desks must be cleaned twice a week.
3.
Two brand-new copies of an environmentalist memoir in an oil company’s bin. They don’t do paper recycling here. You can’t make this shit up.
4.
Anything found in a bin is fair salvage. A stapler. Intact plates. Half a dozen reusable water bottles with the name Edwin printed on them. A clipboard. Books with an unprofitable message.
5.
The cleaning supply closet is the perfect dump for anything that needs storing. Cleaning equipment, supplied by the cleaning company and miscellaneous other. A hoard of face masks left over from the earlier years of the pandemic. A supernumerary office chair. A bucket of fresh flowers. A secret stash of snacks where the other office people won’t think to look.
6.
A list of birthdays taped to a monitor. A few balloons migrate from desk to desk, slightly more shriveled each time. Bunting suspended from the suspended ceiling gently rains glitter into the cracks of the keyboards below.
7.
A small office generates an astounding volume of rubbish. Cardboard boxes. Paper towels. Paper and plastic cups. Food wrappers. Takeout bags and containers. Half-eaten food. Unidentifiable plastic. Imagine how much more trash all the office people throw away at home.
8.
Spotlights illuminate featureless concrete and polymer walls. Logos sear their brands onto the night. They offer no hint as to the product or service provided by the businesses behind them. No one is around to see them. The night sky is yellow.
This part of the city was not made for people. It is the output of a terrain generator with a limited set of assets – asphalt, cars, parking space, box-shaped office, box-shaped garage, chain-link fence, more cars – and set to randomise. There are no humans.
2.
Heaters blaze all night. The radio sings to no one, briefly, between the advertising. Spotless unused desks must be cleaned twice a week.
3.
Two brand-new copies of an environmentalist memoir in an oil company’s bin. They don’t do paper recycling here. You can’t make this shit up.
4.
Anything found in a bin is fair salvage. A stapler. Intact plates. Half a dozen reusable water bottles with the name Edwin printed on them. A clipboard. Books with an unprofitable message.
5.
The cleaning supply closet is the perfect dump for anything that needs storing. Cleaning equipment, supplied by the cleaning company and miscellaneous other. A hoard of face masks left over from the earlier years of the pandemic. A supernumerary office chair. A bucket of fresh flowers. A secret stash of snacks where the other office people won’t think to look.
6.
A list of birthdays taped to a monitor. A few balloons migrate from desk to desk, slightly more shriveled each time. Bunting suspended from the suspended ceiling gently rains glitter into the cracks of the keyboards below.
7.
A small office generates an astounding volume of rubbish. Cardboard boxes. Paper towels. Paper and plastic cups. Food wrappers. Takeout bags and containers. Half-eaten food. Unidentifiable plastic. Imagine how much more trash all the office people throw away at home.
8.
Spotlights illuminate featureless concrete and polymer walls. Logos sear their brands onto the night. They offer no hint as to the product or service provided by the businesses behind them. No one is around to see them. The night sky is yellow.
