A Metaphor Gone Metastatic

When I can focus, I focus hard. This can be an asset at work: deep focus tends to mean hella productivity. Deep focus also means that any interrupts are somewhat jarring.

If I'm not focusing, I will notice when someone shows up at my cube. If I am focusing, and I'm dwelling within the Headphones of Oblivion, anything that succeeds in getting my attention will probably also make me startle.

My co-workers always seem chagrined at disturbing me, but that is in fact my job, to be disturbed to do random things, on basically every other day but the 2nd Thursday of the month.

I've been wanting to rig up something, because the best way of getting my attention is visual (even though that can fail if I'm really in the zone). I'd been poking around, but most of the cubicle doorbells I'd seen (no, fingers, not "doorbees") had been too noisy to be neighborly.

Then I was at Fry's the other night looking for a slightly exotic battery, and wandered into the security section, and they had wireless doorbells. One of them lit up. It was inexpensive enough, and claimed its volume was adjustable enough, that I thought it might be worth a try.

Turned out that the volume had two settings, loud and louder. That's all right for a doorbell. I started thinking of how I could fuck up the speaker enough to be cubicle-friendly, then chided myself for not thinking like an engineer. I unscrewed the unit, and discovered to my delight that the speaker wire plugged in. When unplugged, it just blinked.

My cube now has a doorbell button, and the blinking unit is set right below my monitor, where I'll probably see it. I showed it off to the Stage Manager, who has been running around like the proverbial chicken in the past few days. He has been delightedly using it. I'm not sure if I've missed it yet, but I've found myself turning around without really realizing why I just decided to turn around, and then seeing the flashing light out of the corner of my eye, finally coming to my notice.

One of those times, he asked: "Do you have a highlighter color in something ... other than yellow?" and brandished his yellow highlighter with some disdain.

"What color do you want?" I asked, digging through my desk. (The recent ZOMGAAAAAAUGH has resulted in complete confusion on every available surface of my cube except the keyboard, my syrup rack, and Beyoncé Jr.'s place of pride.)

"Any color, really," he said. "It could be pink, or ... what colors do you have?"

I located the packet, under a notebook and three boxes of badge fixin's. "Every color," I said, and whipped it out.

"Those are highlighters?" the Stage Manager said in covetous disbelief, and went into what I can only describe as "ferret shock", fingers twitching towards one marker, then towards another, making little incoherent sounds.

"Or if you want you could borrow the whole packet," I said. It's not that I'm against watching my managers in a state of twitching indecision, but it's unfair to take advantage of a guy who's clearly in no fit condition to make unnecessary decisions.

This was the right answer, as he snagged the packet and ran back off to his office, clearly planning to color-code the ever-living daylights out of next week's schedule.