Compliance

    

    The worst nightmare is the one where you find yourself at work. Dream-world employment is slightly different than your real job. This morning I interacted with several coworkers from my actual job. 

    The story begins inside the mall again - I come inside after getting caught in a rain shower. Soaking wet, I head up to my office, removing my work shirt and lanyard that has my access card. Big mistake. I realize that I’m slim again, this isn’t enough to snap me out of the dream. After a minute or two marveling at my teenaged torso, I step out of the office for some reason. The door slams shut. My access card is on the table. Crap. Now the only thing to do is find the security desk and plead my case. This isn’t the first time. The problem with finding security is that I’m in the MC Escher mall. Confusion isn’t the only problem, now it’s time to go on a quest. Just like the iconic painting and the halls of “Hogwarts”, no one direction is actually going where it seems. I find myself heading down an escalator, I see a section of a hotel that has slot machines (I’m in Las Vegas till tonight) deciding that I need a diversion - I head that way. Unfortunately for me, none of the stairs and escalators connect to that level. Trying a different route, I figure there must be another way. Now the scene changes - I’ve made it to a financial center in the mall. Flustered by my inability to get some gambling in, I figured taking the elevator to another level would get me closer. The “financial” center had gold striping over a brown wall - the elevator door was golden. I step into a tight, one person elevator. My perspective warps. The elevator is now a golden pill, wrapped tightly around my body. Claustrophobia sets in - I feel like I’m in a document chute. I can see the different floors fly by, the casino floor comes into view and I hit stop. Just missing by one floor I try to jog the elevator up one flight by pressing the directional buttons.

***

    This exercise only brings me back where I began. I’m at the entrance to the mall looking at the miserable rainy day outside the windows. Discouraged, wasting so much time, now it was back to work. My only hope was finding one of my coworkers making a mail run. I head up the escalators again and see one of my workers on the level above, walking in the opposite direction. The noise of the mall meant I couldn’t really call out for him to meet me at my office. I just wave at him and he disappears around a corner. I reach the top level and here comes another coworker Mrs. V. I ask her if she could let me in the room because the mailroom employees had universal access. She walks with me over to my area, swipes me into the room. My uniform shirt is dry already, I check my slim chest one last time, and hang my lanyard around my neck. Walking to the back area of my office, I enter a gray door that opens out to a warehouse. A manager is talking to the team about the audit and how we could tidy up the space so we would be in compliance. The manager is familiar, starts off looking like one actor and then Brian Dennehy. I walk up to the conversation and pull another coworker to the side, he seemed confused. I explain to him that the audit is just a knowledge check, nothing to worry about. I walk him down one of the warehouse aisles and point to an item and ask him what it is. He responded correctly. I ask him where I can find the item HB - 5/6 he walks over to the right bin and pulls out a box. Satisfied that he understood the concept, I turn around and face the manager who walked up behind me. “What are you doing?” “I was just showing K how easy the audit is - I’m glad I did - I wouldn’t have known where to find a HB - 5/6.” BD barks at me - “Well you better learn everything in this warehouse!” I look dead at him and reply “I couldn’t possibly memorize everything, there has to be one million items in here - and that’s just from one glance!” 

***

    Diverting my attention to the tops of the aisles I see they hadn’t addressed the issue of storage. Random boxes were piled too high, touching the top of the concrete ceiling. Pointing this out to the manager I said “Can we get the crew to do something about the boxes up there?” BD gathers a few of the younger guys to hop up on ladders to remove the offending stock. This was completed quickly. Next I climbed up and asked about the cardboard patch meant to stop a leak in the roof. “As long as the engineers were the ones who put it there, we can’t be blamed for it” BD shouts up to me. I make a mental note to create a ticket for engineering to fix the problem. My next target is across the warehouse on the far wall, I can see machine parts - again stacked too high. Climbing back down I pull BD with me over to the other wall rack and tell him not to worry, that I would take care of this mess. “I’ll make sure this place is compliant, OSHA compliant.” 

***

    I wake up from this long dream. Try as I might, it was fading from memory quickly. Bits and pieces are floating around, I snatch a couple of images and slowly build the dream back up. The warehouse is fictional - images pulled from walking the aisles at Home Depot. My job is inside a building, no mall attached. It was funny that I wanted to get to the slot machines to have another crack at them. I felt the raindrops and the soaked shirt. Just another dream to make sure I’m -

COMPLIANT.