Pharmacia

I pulled into the lot beside the large old building. Unlike the offices, which I had previously worked in, offices which constantly looked new, this had the architecture and wear of age. As you drove by the front you could see where the building had once read Upjohn, the company it had been two mergers ago. In those days this was a Kalamazoo company, not a Peapack, New Jersey company with a Kalamazoo plant.

I nearly got swept up in that move to New Jersey. While I packed and traveled and helped my team get set up there, Deb, my boss, was making job offers for me to join them. It would be a promotion, in the company, not just a contractor, making considerably more money, but.... It was in New Jersey. Despite my initial temptation, I said no.

With Deb and Ben, Kathy and Tom all moved, my job was ending. I was in the specialist category of Employment Group, what a horrible name, which meant they sent me to more unusual jobs. This one, their first technical writer position, is what brought me here. I used my contractor badge at the side door and walked into a strange environment.

The office I came from, doing research for Managed Market Intelligence, was carpeted and glass, full of sun. This, though, was completely different. The side door opened into a windowless hallway, which ended in large wood doors. The wall had plaques which were twenty, thirty, fifty years old. The kind with dark wood and a face of tarnished bronze beside a few words. Even the plant in the corner, surrounded by dim light, seemed old. I took the stairs down, but only a few feet in I already felt lost.

The white rock stairs, with black strips of grit to keep you from slipping ended in a smooth concrete floor. The doors at the bottom opened into a wide, very wide, wide as a street type hallway. When I stepped into it I was stunned. Because I didn't know it was here, it took me a minute to take it in. The top of the hallway, easy six feet above my head, was not a ceiling at all. It was pipes, water and gas, wire for electricity, phones and computers, ducts for heating and air returns all packed so tightly, you could not see a ceiling through them at all. They were labeled with block text and bundled. Some showed age, paint being pushed off by the rust beneath and others were clearly new. They seemed to run the length of the hall, but it was too long to tell. From this spot, I could not see the end.

If the ceiling was static chaos, the hall was moving chaos. Yellow lights on moving vehicles could be seen in the distance, people walked, some in jeans, others in white Tyvek suits on either side of the hall. I noticed a yellow stripe on either side noting the pedestrian areas. In addition the the mother vehicles there were three wheeled bicycles, some with giant baskets, others pulling tool chests, moving about. Everyone out here was going somewhere else. None of them noticed this crazy underground environment they were moving through anymore.

It occurred to me, I had somewhere to be too. I was supposed to meet me new boss, Frank. Second area on the right. I had no ideas how I would know one area from another, but I started on my way.