Light

He could not believe how disorganized things were in their offices. From what he could tell after a short tour of the different areas on their floors, Claude thought that Hikari and Co. were used to just throwing everything everywhere at any time. They did have one system that worked: the garbage disposal. But even this was slowed down by the fact that there was only one set of plastic garbage cans on wheels. These were taken down to the dumpsters every other week so that the city could handle that mess. 

It was almost hard to see why he was called in if they insisted on doing things this way. So, Claude and his crew from Menlo Co. did a study of their “garbage outflow” – a term they felt that they had to create – and realised that they could save the company a lot of money through recycling their less-sensitive documents and making other changes in the office. After a week of thorough analysis, they presented their ideas to the office. Claude was surprised and pleased to be given the job, even after the tour.

The first priority was the paper. This is what disturbed him the most and made him doubt the company’s interest in changing their work environment. Claude knew that this was the biggest problem in the office and the main reason why the business relationships between employees was so disorganized. Stacks of yellowing paper filled rooms that could barely be entered without a machete and a flashlight. His crew took a look at one room and noted that it was filled with bills and notices that were typewritten and dated from over fifty years ago. The new owners, who opened their offices a month earlier, said that it could all be tossed out (only records from the last three months were not to be touched). A team of a dozen men spent a week clearing out the rooms they kept discovering as they examined the plan of the office. Claude also made a call to a few companies and brought in some individual recycling bins and three larger receptacles for each floor. No one really minded having them in the workspace.

Without the extra paper, Claude found it easy to proceed with a program of rejuvenating all three floors. Plants were brought in to lightening up the environment and he asked if the employees themselves were willing to take care of them. Soon, the offices took on the appearance of a hothouse with plants used to filter the air. The company did not mind this extra expense (Claude knew some people who could make a deal on the flora).

Plastic and glass were next. More receptacles were needed. After a week of fresher air and more space to manoeuvre, Claude received many compliments from the workers on all floors. They enjoyed taking care of the plants and becoming up-to-date with the recycling program he set up for them (twice a week, three large bins were filled in the hallway of each floor to haul away paper, plastic and glass). The owners were also happy with more productive workers. It all proceeded quite well. The only problem was the lights.

From the outside, anyone looking at the building would have taking its chrome and glass and declared it no different from any other office in the city. There were the standard floor-to-ceiling panes of glass and fluorescent lights on most floors; but not for Hikari and Co. Whoever had designed their particular spaces made the odd choice of putting yellow light bulbs into their ceilings. There were spaces cut out of the ceiling tiles to allow a single light bulb to be screwed in when necessary. It was easy enough to change them one at a time; but they provided uneven light when the sun set; their wattage varied from bulb to bulb; and they did not appear to save the office money or improve efficiency. Claude spoke to the managers, and after a very long meeting about the odd arrangement of the lights, it was agreed that Menlo Co. would be now take on the task of rewiring each floor and resetting the light fixtures. This was to start immediately.

On the first day of this new job, two men were slightly electrocuted removing a grate over a heating vent. It was clear that they had to shut off the power floor by floor before they could touch any of the metal above their desks. There was also the problem of the insulation used to keep the wiring and fixtures secured. At first, Claude’s men though it was Styrofoam that had aged, turned a darker colour, and smelled vile. But Claude’s instincts were sharper; he guessed and was correct in believing that the walls and ceilings were thick with asbestos. Soon, they were removing all of the ceiling tiles on the first floor; then they proceeded to go through the walls with sledgehammers to remove and replace what they found. A whole weekend was spent on one set of rooms and thick clouds of dust were still wafting through the corridors on Monday morning. Claude wondered to himself if anyone had claimed sick days before they arrived. He did not mention the asbestos to any of the workers.

On that morning, the managers called him in for a meeting and he was interrogated on what had happened over the weekend. He explained the damage by referencing the injuries sustained by his men with the metal and the unseen electric current. When he began to talk about the asbestos-laden dust, the managers looked staggered and uncomfortable in their seats. One asked whether they were safe and Claude was happy to tell him that, if was going to get sick, it would have happened by now. This man agreed, but he did not look relieved. Claude said that, by working one floor at a time, they were actually reducing the risk to the workers. It was then agreed that workers would not work on certain floors when Menlo Co. were at work. Claude had already ordered special suits and more equipment for his men. He wanted this job to be done by the end of the month.

Five long weekends passed. The dust of many years of construction design soon disappeared through the extra vents installed in the air-conditioning unit. The walls were redone first and the ceilings very slowly to make sure the light fixtures worked and that the tiles were sturdy enough to hold them.  Claude replaced this and the insulation section by section as soon as he figured out how the electricity was wired floor by floor. The biggest problem was that they could not discover why the power suddenly shut off after the final floor was picked clean of the yellowing light bulbs. It was a Saturday. He now had two dozen of his men in safety gear inspecting the power grid of each floor and they noticed certain discrepancies. Claude was aware that the power was not disrupted in the other offices when they handled the electricity on any of Hikari and Co.’s three floors. He had brought in meters and other sensing devices to discover where the problem started and had found nothing.

Claude told his crew not to come in on Sunday and that he would accept all responsibility for the lack of power on the last floor. All the insulation and most of the ceiling tiles were in. The walls were done on two floors. Now he had to figure out why they were still stuck. He decided to look at a plan of the office and this was when he discovered an odd situation with the wiring. It was something he had only seen in old buildings where part of the structure was not updated. They – whomever “they” were – had done the top floors and the bottom floors anew; they left Hikari and Co. alone. Claude suspected why this happened: the paper. They could not have risked a single spark hitting that bulge of records and receipts. And with those stacks of another office’s history now gone, Claude could now proceed to explore and do what he felt was necessary to bring them into right mode.

He went on each floor and soon discovered the remains of a bulb in the ceiling of the last floor they had tried to finish. It had shattered and the remnants of it were still stuck in the socket. Claude noted that they had stopped here on the Saturday when they were trying to get the power back. It was a good thing that he was doing this on his own.

He stood on a desk with a flashlight and removed one of the tiles around the broken bulb. A wire ran out of the light socket into an air-conditioning vent. Claude jumped down, wiped the dust and sweat from his face, went out into the main lobby and found a grill which opened onto the very same vent.

It was very hot in the vent and Claude sweated as he crawled toward the wire. Part of it was exposed directly in the vent. Wiping his face, he could follow the direction of the wire down another vent. He kept on sweating as he reached back for the duct tape and knife he brought with him. This had to be the problem. The flash light caught the tape and his efforts to cut it in shifting shadows. He took a large strip and laid it over the bare section of wire. And suddenly everything became a comfortable white light.

* * * * *

Early on Monday morning, the first person on the floor was the same manager who had asked Claude about the safety of the air after the asbestos was discovered. He looked around the last floor Menlo Co. had worked on and was impressed by the job they did. A grill for one of the vents was left on the ground, but everything else looked better than before. The lighting was perfect (very gentle on the eyes) and the air felt cleaner. He tossed his Styrofoam cup into the right bin.

There was just one problem: someone had been eating in the office over the weekend. They did not work for the office, but he felt that someone should talk to Claude’s crew about this. An overwhelming odour of roast pork was coming out of the air vents into each section of the office. When that man came in, he decided, they would have a little talk to remind him and his company – and the other office staff – not to eat in there but instead use the cafeteria or kitchenette. Still, he could forgive this one little mistake. The office looked fantastic.