Gertrude’s Energy Advice

Have to stay focused Gertrude thought as she shuffled down a hallway of beaten down carpet and walls painted an inoffensive beige.  She was deep in the after-lunch lull of her day, but with a 3:00pm meeting fast approaching she needed a cup of coffee more than anything.

Her feet barely rose above the floor to move her along.  Her eyes tried to shield themselves from the overhead light which, regardless of time of day, always felt too bright.  The hallway to the second floor kitchenette where the coffee machine was stowed had never felt longer.

She ran through data and update notes that she would have to present.  She thought of what to have for dinner.  She thought of weekend plans, state capitals, fun names for bunnies, the NHL playoff situation; anything to keep herself moving along.  It was going to be a dastardly long afternoon if this hallway kept going.

Finally, the kitchenette arrived in view and she grabbed a plastic one-cup coffee cup and put it into the little machine with a name she could not, perhaps would not, pronounce.

Oh that smells so good she thought taking in a big sniff of the steam coming off the coffee maker.

“Hey, Gertrude, still doing coffee, huh?” Mark from IT asked.  He appeared out of nowhere and was chipper.  At 1:30 in the afternoon, no one in this office was ever ‘chipper’.

“Hey Mark.  Until they make something better, it is coffee for me,” Gertrude said.  The coffee making wonder machine spurt out the last bit of water into her cup and hissed.

“Let me tell you my secret.  You’ll never go back to coffee again,” Mark whispered.  It was a tantalizing whisper.  There was sincere mystery to his tone and Gertrude was hooked.

“You have a better way?” She asked.  She pulled her cup off the machine and set it aside, waiting for Mark’s big secret.

“I hired a guy to scare me throughout the day.  He’s somewhere in this building right now.  I have this little app thing on my phone that lets him know when I am nearby and before I know it there’s an old school hockey goal tender mask popping up from around a corner.  I am running on pure adrenaline for 12-14 hours a day.  It is incredible, I have to tell you,” Mark said.  His smiled and took a drink from a water bottle.  Only then did Gertrude realize he had not blinked since he arrived in the kitchenette.

“That sounds stressful,” Gertrude said.

“Well, I am consuming far less sugar than I used to as a coffee drinker so I feel pretty good,” Mark said.  “You should download the app.  It’s called HauntR; they’re the Uber of alternative workplace energy resources.  You can have your own HauntR here in like 15 minutes.”

Gertrude thanked Mark for the tip and returned to her desk.

When she got back to work she noticed she had left her coffee in the kitchenette.

She pulled out her phone.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!