Dear lord, I’m bored. I’m here at work but I have, as is usual for a Saturday, nothing to do. I’m still not sure why we have to work on Saturdays when we operate at half-strength anyway and no one’s really in the mood to do anything because we all know it’s Saturday. Having said that, I’ll endeavor to write tidbits about my workplace, since such details have been woefully sporadic in this year’s journal entries.

Tidbit no. 1: It’s funny how among the women, at least, some prefer and even insist on using the restroom that’s equipped for handicapped access and won’t step into the common ladies’ restroom except under duress. I can understand the need for privacy, I suppose, since the former is a little room unto itself whereas the latter has four cubicles laid out a la typical public restrooms. But I’m thinking, if all these fussy people use the one for handicapped access, then that solitary cubicle is used so many times more than any of the four cubicles in the regular restroom, which share out the germs between them. Besides, at least we have four cubicles to share between all 40-50 women that work on this floor. At my old school, there were four cubicles shared by about eighty women, and none of us ever caught any funny diseases from going to the toilet.

Tidbit no. 2: There are some odd women --- and yes, they are, alas, women --- who work in the department that shares this floor with us. They’re odd because they never look at you when they walk past you, they never smile, they never say hello and they’re really just --- odd. Okay, I just thought of at least one guy who ought to join this list of oddness: the only time he spoke to me was when he wanted to know where my colleague (who sits in the next cubicle) was; other than that, he always looks oddly at me when we bump into each other and I never quite make it to greeting him since he looks like he wouldn’t know what to do if I did.

But what’s so hard about saying a simple hello, especially since we share a common boss and work on the same floor? I’m not even suggesting anything as sophisticated as the American “Hi --- how are you --- how’s it going --- etc.” But it’s the blank looks that really bother me, as if I’m not standing right there.