An Observation of Space
Our break room was alright considering that it was in the basement of a run-down mall, sporting the luxuries of a television that had a sticky remote, a DVD player that refused to play movies except for the first disk of season two of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", along with an assortment of boxed set television series provided for our small bursts of leisure. It was a breath of relief from the stressful environment that swallows you whole the second you walk through the door from the Hell that was the sales floor.
The fridge was tucked into a corner, a white solemn pillar that often went unnoticed, blending into the wall. It stood in a state of starvation, littered with the odd offerings of Tupperware, frozen dinners, the sickly sweet odour of rotting fruit that was long forgotten about, the sticky remains of an ice cream cake from the last resignation party and the half of a Popsicle from the last time the managers bought guilt-snacks for the staff.
The communal, round piece of laminate-covered particle-board that we called a table at the centre of the room was always weighed with forgotten mugs of cold coffee and soda cups sitting in a ring of their own exhausted condensation. Brown take-out bags, translucent with grease and time left their marks on the tacky, never-quite-clean tabletop, waiting for their owners to come rushing in on a break, heading straight for the food-splattered, stainless-steel interior of the overworked microwave. It wheezed warm air through its seams as the glass plate spins languidly inside, cutting into the precious few minutes of freedom granted during a frustratingly long, eight-hour workday.
A sign hangs precariously from yellowing tape on the mock-birch cabinets, crudely scrawled on a scrap piece of office foolscap in red dry-ink marker. A plea from the irritated management about the piles of dirty dishes that lie defiantly in the filth of the ancient sink that threatens to clog up, once again, from bits of water-bloated food that collect in the drain. An empty dish rack collects dust just next to it.
On the right, a dorm-room-esque shelving unit, one that was never meant to stand as long as it has been standing, cradles binders full of communal knowledge we all should know, but no one has really read them. Amongst them are a collection of found objects that have been left behind by former co-workers or scatter-brained shoppers: from books by acclaimed authors to harlequin trash from the racks at Wal-Mart, magazines from the year before, accounting textbooks, a Sophie the Giraffe and multitudes of McDonald's Happy Meal toys, facing out, their shiny plastic eyes glued to you as they sit and watch you eat.
The room's temperature was never quite warm enough. Often, we go back to the floor shivering, pulling our sweaters around us a little tighter, rubbing our hands together for some heat via friction. The chairs, hard plastic, never hold heat, leaving us to tuck ourselves under our limbs, folding legs on top one other, or under ourselves as we contort to have as little contact with the chair as possible. This is where we come to rest, to roost and pick at our meals, to converse and let off some steam, because our water dispenser doesn't let out boiling water anymore.