It is a little known fact that when you take the elevator up from the lobby to the 4th floor to get to the lobby of our office, you could also press the down button on the elevator and get to our offices. Yes, that’s right. Carpenter Hazlewood has two floors in our building. A year or so ago we outgrew the 4th floor and the only space the building had open was on the bottom floor, and a small group of us had to move.
The name of that bottom floor is very dependent on who is talking. If you were moving, it was the Dungeon. If you were convincing people to move, it was the Garden Level! To the building management, it is simply the Parking Level. To us, it is the Basement. Isn’t that really what the lowest floor is—a Basement? We never saw why the name had to evoke such emotion, and Client Relations was getting moved. Truth be told, the basement dwellers weren’t getting such a bad deal. If you have never been behind our building, it is gorgeous. There is a nice green park with tall pine trees and a shaded little pond with bridges over it, complete with ducks who deliver ducklings right on time every spring. And the Basement Dwellers have windows looking right out onto the park now. Some of the offices even have doors that open out there!
So the Basement Dwellers had the killer view, but they we were cut off socially. It was Client Relations, the 4 person management and accounting team (all females)…and Scott. We took to calling ourselves the Basement Babes…and Scott. We developed our own little culture down there, as isolated people often do. We developed bad habits like just yelling across the space for each other instead of walking into each others’ offices or using the phone system. Why would we do that when we practically see the person we needed? Basement bonding. Good times. We were just getting ready to order Basement Babes T-shirts (minus Scott). Then the IT guys moved down…the fun was over for good. But computer help is just a step away. That is not such a bad thing when your keyboard freezes. And the view is still really nice.
I remember when my parents (many years ago) told me I could move my bedroom into the basement. Since then I have always considered a move to the basement a step up, as it were.