Musings For The Masses

I’m not sure if I’ve ever really described my workplace or the people who visit it, be it in the waiting area outside my office, or underneath my window two stories below.

It’s a strange mix of people, and I’ve always wondered what happened in their lives to lead them to where they are today.  Some of them are drug addicts, some of them have mental illness and some of them seem perfectly normal (whatever perfectly normal is.)

Carol visits my office daily.  I’m not sure what her story is, as she’s told me she’s worked for the government but says she can’t give away too much.  She uses the free phone in the waiting area and calls various people to make complaints about her living conditions.  Apparently her living conditions are all wrong and she’s upset because she doesn’t like the color on the walls in her apartment.  She has called almost every agency in the city to complain about this, and yesterday she called the police.  I began to think that maybe the police had better things to do in Seattle than helping Carol with her paint color issue, but you never know maybe she’s got a connection that I don’t know about.

Steven visits the office daily too.  I fear he may be bi-polar with a bit of schizophrenia.  He’s really the only one that kind of scares me when he’s having one of his manic episodes.  He’s rude and surly and likes to stick things in door locks so that we can’t get into offices.  He’s been picking fights with anyone that walks in here to use the free phone.  At one point I thought he was harmless but these days I’m not so sure.  I’ve caught him hanging outside the ladies  room when I’ve gone in there, it’s creepy.  I think he may be one episode away from full on massacre.

Then there are the various people I hear outside my office window.  Just sounds of the city’s homeless I suppose.  But it’s interesting.  There was the one time the police stopped the guy with the arsenal in his duffel bag, then of course the various people who smoke just under my window and have conversations with anyone who happens to be walking by.  Most of them are nice and I’ve only gotten asked out twice. I declined both times. 

My workdays are never dull and most days I walk away unscathed, but some days it emotionally draining.  It really gets me when the Moms and Dads with kids walk in and need housing and there’s not a whole lot we can do for them.  Seattle is in a crisis right now, wether the city choses to acknowledge this is another story.  The city is so limited on low-income and affordable housing that we have wait lists for wait lists.  I’ve learned way more than I ever wanted to know about the working poor, the homeless, the drug addicted and the people with mental illness.  It’s also taught me to look at the world just a little bit differently.  Through unfiltered glasses, though I will admit, at times, I do put those glasses on because hey, we all need to escape into  the Wonderful World of Make Believe sometimes.