The deskman.

So there is this guy who sits in the lobby at work. His name is George and he looks like a cross between Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson in Miami Vice, and he sounds like someone doing a bad impression of a drunk Jimmy Stewart. (Actually, Jimmy sounds like he is doing a drunk impression of himself in The Philadelphia Story). It's actually a really cool set up-- you walk in a set of glass doors and there is a big open lobby and his circular desk is right in the middle. Well, normally it is a cool set-up. It is not, however, conducive to sneaking in late after a night of drinking (or a morning of sleeping on the steering wheel). There is no place to hide; it is just a big empty room with him right in the middle. Yet every morning after I attempt to make myself as un-obvious as possible. Right. So last Friday morning after Oola's Ladies Eighties Night at Fuel, I come stumbling in closer to 9 than to 8 o'clock. I glanced through the glass doors, squinting in the morning sunlight. George has his back to the doors, he was on the phone. Taking my chance, I quietly but quickly open the double doors and try to tip-toe on the marble floors to the elevator. However, I was wearing slip-on heels, and like flip-flops, when you take a step forward, the heel portion of the shoe normally makes a FLOPping sound. This noise becomes much worse when you add the extra resistance from the tip-toe position. All this adds up to two or three resounding FLOP FLOP FLOPs as I scuttled across the marble floor. Panicked by the extra noise my shoes were making, a resorted to shuffling. And with my eyes only on George, I missed the mop bucket and wet floor sign right in front of the elevators. When my shuffling feet hit the wet marble, they shot out from under me and I found myself in the same position as the guy on the yellow sign, like a dead bug. The commotion grabbed George's attention, and he swiveld around in his chair and got up to help me. He missed the bright yellow sign as well and he went down like an inebriated turtle. As we both flailed about, I managed to hit the elevator button. When the silver doors opened, I crawled to the carpet and finally found my footing and helped George up. He dusted himself off, straightened his tie, looked at me, and shook his head. He was still shaking his head when the elevator doors shut.

I am definitely going to try harder to get to work on time. Or buy quieter footwear.