« 2006 Birds Season Preview | Main | ThatKid Heartily Recommends "Higher" »
September 21, 2006
When C@L Recycles, We All Burn
Snapshot from the environmentally conscious cafeteria at work
So I'm sitting in the charmingly appointed cafeteria at work the other day -- a lovely space whose soaring ceiling and massive windows are designed to maximize productivity and general well-being -- chatting with some buddies over the remains of a disappointing chocolate chip cookie. The work masters have been hiring of late, and the cafeteria is beginning to feel the strain of all the folks: longer lines and fewer and fewer places to sit.
So you can imagine the chaos when the fire alarm began blaring a few minutes before 1 pm. A very crowded cafeteria needed to empty very quickly. The fire alarm at least seemed legit; I definitely recognized the smell of burning toast emanating from the direction of the kitchens.
We dutifully gathered up the detritus from our lunches (sushi comma again) and made our way in an orderly fashion toward the door. Given the fact that we could actually smell something burning, I was actually pretty impressed that there wasn't more of a commotion. In fact, there was a (somewhat predictable) logjam by the door, but it was pretty mellow.
Only the logjam wasn't actually by the door. The traffic at the door was moving pretty well. The bottleneck was at the bank of trash receptacles in front of the door. Before exiting the burning building, the good people were taking the time to throw out their lunch garbage (including me, clutching my aforementioned sushi remains). How terribly polite of them/ us! Only it wasn't just that people were throwing out their garbage -- they were meticulously separating various recyclable materials for deposit in the appropriate bin.
That is, as the cafeteria is ostensibly burning down, folks were holding up the exit line in order to be sure that they didn't toss their polystyrene into the hole marked aluminum cans and vice versa. Never mind that we could smell fire, and that they were blocking the exit of scores of other people (who perhaps made different calculations in re: the importance of not throwing paper trash into the polystyrene bin versus dying a fiery death) -- if you can't think globally and act locally at a moment like this, you might as well buy an SUV and move to LA!
(!!!!)
As noted previously, New York City actually stopped recycling for a couple years there. For the record.
Viva environmentally friendly C@L!
Posted by thatkid at September 21, 2006 11:07 AM under
C@L
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)Copyright (c) 2004-2007 thatkidinthecorner
