Workaday World XXII
Lately, I've become fast friends with Chuck, the current security guard for the Scotch & Sirloin building. Since we learned each others' names, he's greeted me by name every single time he's seen me. Having worked in the security and building management industry for 14 years, Chuck's working here to get out of the house -- and "away from my wife during the day." He's retired military, and he's organized his work load so he's busy for six of the eight hours on the job. Most of the time, security work might be four hours of work during an eight-hour day. He reads when he has free time, and if his wife weren't out of work, he'd go back to school in political science and history. He's only got 18 credits left, he says.

But the excitement today is that they're fixing the windows in the Scotch & Sirloin building. The building management company spent the last five months securing a contractor for the project, and it looks like it's about to start. In the building, there are two kinds of windows. An older, single-pane style, and a newer, double-pane style. They're going to replace all of the single-pane windows and make sure that the new windows are up to snuff. Of the 380-odd windows in the building, about 160-plus are old. On our floor, there are about 45 old windows. I just checked my window now, and it's a new window, double paned with a 3/4-inch silver strip in between the panes. So they won't be climbing all over my desk.

How many windows per floor? I'm glad you asked because I wanted to do the math. If there are 380 windows in the building, with nine floors, that's about 92 windows per floor. If 45 windows in our office are old, that means that they'll replacing about half of them. That's quite an undertaking.

And I wouldn't have known about it were it not for my new friend Chuck.