Out To Lunch.
A coworker asked me where I went for lunch every day and then immediately apologized because she realized that, well, that’s an invasive question. She was just curious because every day at noon I pass by her cubicle with my journal. Not that I have anything to hide but I’d never ask someone where they go because they might have their reasons for wanting to keep that information private. I don’t know if anyone else is like me but when I’m off the clock I want to get as far away from work as possible, and when I’ve gone to lunch with people I work with I try to steer the conversations to pretty much anything but work. I have the advantage of working on a college campus and even when classes are in session there are a lot of empty classrooms or just lounge spaces where I can hide out for half an hour. I’ve worked in office buildings out in the middle of nowhere and felt trapped during lunch because there wasn’t anywhere to go. There was a break room and a dining area with vending machines but if I wanted to get out and walk, go somewhere truly away from work, my options were the parking lot or, just beyond that, the interstate.
It’s really funny to me that, as is the case with a lot of older college campuses, there are lots of buildings that have old exteriors but they’ve been renovated from the inside, usually over years, sometimes over decades, and that’s created some mazelike interiors with rooms I think even people who work in those buildings forget are there. One of these days one of those buildings may be knocked down entirely and they’ll find a grizzled old professor behind a wall, still diligently working away at a monograph on Phoenician etymology.
Anyway, without really thinking about it I started telling the coworker that some days I’d walk a few buildings over to one that has a nice lounge area and an outdoor patio that no one else seems to know about since it was only added during a renovation that happened about five years ago. It wasn’t until I was on my way there that I realized I’d given away a valuable secret and now I need to find a new place to get away. Maybe there’s a space next to that professor’s office.