A great place to visit, but not to stay.

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well. A very eventful day indeed.

I have been to the famed executive floor.

It is good. Life is good up there.

If that's your thing.

Where to start? I should have been tipped off that I wasn't in Kansas anymore when I stepped into the elevator and was enveloped in a very toity mixture of granite and marble in the elevator.

I should have known that I wasn't going to be in my element when we had to be "let in" by the door watcher dude. I call him door watcher dude because he seemed to be more than just the security guy - He seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the goings on of the office. Obviously he know when people come and go, but he knew all the administrative schtuff that was to occur that day. From how the teleconferencing system worked, to where the Man sat. Hmmm. Maybe he's the dude behind the curtain too.

Anyway, so yeah, I've just gotten to the door. :)

We were buzzed in and led into the most crizzazy looking conference room I'd ever seen. I'd seen some crazy dot com conference rooms, but none like this. I guess that's why it's called the board room. This was very corporate. Besides smelling funny (seriously), I'm talkin freakin big wooden horseshoe table (many mature trees died for this thing, let me assure you), microphones all along the tables, leather seats, and this podium that looked like it belonged in some Star Trek federation movie scene. I secretly think you could launch stuff from that console. This place would have made Don Trump proud. I thought the boardroom that he has on his TV show was corporate looking. I think we had that one beat.

The coolest thing in the room was the floor covering. It was this off white spiral pattern that started from the center and went out (I guess it could go from the outside in too) on a black background. Kind of non-traditional I'd say.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention - the tables all had those old skool pen holder pedestals. You know what I'm talking about - one of the corporate symbols of back in the day where you stick a pen into this base thing, on every executive's desk? Kind of like a single holster for a pen (or two). Crazy.

OK, so what else. There were no windows in the board room. It was pretty dark in there too. Mood lighting a plenty.

So outside of the super special board room, there was an "executive lounge" - With pretty much floor to ceiling windows.

The view kicked ass. I can't explain how neat it was. Everything looks so peaceful from the top floor. I wished I had brought my camera. Oh well.

We had some time before the presentation, so D Nice showed me around the joint. The boardroom was pretty cool (in a corporate sort of way), but I was more impressed by the the rest of the floor. All natural materialed table surfaces (leather, mineral, or wood) - none of the Formica table top and fabric cube crap. Real wood furniture. Clean carpet.

The odd thing was the inner doors. The executive offices were all along the windows. The core of the building was separated by these really odd doors. I was througly confused by them. You'd walk along the wall, and just see a handicap accessible door handle sticking out. No visible hinges, just an outline of a door that's flush against the wall. So you grab the handle and wonder: Push or pull?

So this door led to the restrooms and....

The executive kitchen. We were treated to leftovers after the presentation. At that time I was so hungry I would have gone around the room and asked, "are you going to finish that?"

So cool. This place was a mini professional gourmet kitchen. The people in there were so nice. There was a sub zero looking thing that was stocked full of food. I felt like a rap star. All that was missing was Cristal.

The food just tasted better there. The fruit was fresher. The beverages just tasted better out of a swanky glass. The bread tasted better. The chicken soup was incredible. The cookies were so tasty. The kitchen staff put up a fuss when we chose not to use the dishes and opted for the styrofoam plates instead. We did get the fine china experience when we had our soup though.

Oh yeah, real silverware and linen napkins too.

Sorry, I'm used to plasticware, styrofoam and disposable napkins in our cafeteria.

Oh yeah, I got to see the Man's office too. Not too bad. But I would have chosen different furniture personally ;)

At the end of the day, I could only sum up my visit in one word: Surreal.

I didn't realize whenwe went back to our own office complex, the minute I opened the door and was walking through the lobby, I immediately felt a relief of pressure. (I didn't even present!). Anyway, I didn't feel it, but the entire time I was up in the executive level, I had gotten progressively more tense. Going back to our offices was such a relief. After seeing what the execs have, I now call our offices the "ghetto." It just seemed fitting.

Even after I got back, it took me a little bit to decompress. Kinda crazy.

I thoroughly felt out of place on the executive level. It was nice and all, but while I was there, I didn't really feel like it was somewhere I aspired to be either. I think I like being in the trenches. It's hard to say.

It was a nice diversion from the day though...

-Kirk