My office building now comes complete with holiday decorations.
I call them "holiday" decorations and not "Christmas" decorations because they are making a remarkable attempt to be inclusive. Really. See, in one corner, there is a large Christmas tree with lights and fake wrapped-up presents underneath. (I have always wanted to open those up anyway -- a. because I love unwrapping things, and b. because someone just might have wrapped up something good by mistake.) There are strands of garland-wrapped fake-pine draping the Directory signs. There are large red velvet bows. But -- in another corner, well. This other corner is where the decorations get really special. There is a chipped, transparent plastic menorah with orange light bulbs to represent the candles, sitting on a broken, lopsided TV cart. I mean, precious, right?
Well, hell. At least they managed to do one thing right: my floor now has its very own access to the elevators. No longer will I have to walk up a spiral staircase to get to the floor above's elevators! Ha-hah! Rumour has it, the 26th floor (i.e., mine) used to be a sweatshop, and the owners did not want their workers to have free access to, say, the outside. They boarded up the elevators and made them file past a checkpoint (the spiral stairs) whenever they wanted to go anywhere. In the years since, the elevators were modernized, the 26th floor doors were not -- and when the sweatshop was displaced, the new tenants had to make do with the stairs too.
However, a mere two years since moving in here, my company has finally fixed those old-fashioned doors. I push a button just down the hall, and voila! A magical trip to the ground.
Now, if only they could manage to make the door go Bing! like it does elsewhere -- I have already missed my ride twice as the new doors opened and closed again before I noticed.