December 12, 2014

December 12, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Recently, there have been some pretty drastic environmental changes, which have affected the behaviors and the lives of many people in North California. Due to the heavy rain, this author got flooded out of his office. The classes for the clients have been cancelled and this author and his colleagues have had to move out of their office to Chico. Next week, the program will be started back up again in a building which was temporarily rented for this purpose. The rains have flooded many houses and one colleague had a cow which unfortunately drowned.

Although currently there is not much that can be done, except calling a few clients, this author doesn’t feel too badly affected by the chaos. The worst part was when his office flooded and when he had to remove his car, which was parked right next to the creek which had overflown. His shoes and his trousers had all gotten wet and when he drove back to Chico, the road was closed and he had to make a big detour and almost came too late to his class. That night he taught with wet feet, but other than that there was no real problem. His time at the Chico office is spend mostly idle.

As the rain kept pouring, the parking lot in front of the Chico office got flooded. Although the water had reached higher than the curb and apparently wasn’t draining, there was no alarm that the water would reach as high as the building. The person in charge was monitoring the situation closely and arranged for some workers to come and pump away the water. One anxious colleague, however, who always wants to control  the situation, insisted that the water might enter the building. Even though she was not the one to decide, she urged everyone to start clearing all the items from the ground and instantly people were putting everything that was on the floor on the tables and shelves. As expected by this author, this activity was totally unnecessary, since the water never came that close. The fact that entire file cabinets had been lifted from the floor and had been placed on office desks, that computers, wires, boxes and books had been stacked up everywhere, was not appreciated by the colleagues whose office had suddenly been drastically reorganized. One colleague was complaining that no permission had been given to leave early. Her otherwise cheery mood was negatively affected by this challenging event. A third colleague worried about the clients and she made a depressed impression. A fourth one, the supervisor, became hyper talkative and reached out for a hug, while this author’s boss seemed withdrawn and gloomy. It is was interesting to see how everyone's behavior had changed due to this unexpected situation. Of course, it created stress about how to get the program started back up, but there was not much left of everyone's so-called positive attitude.