Surviving the Office Rat Race : Lunch Time Hideouts

Working in an office allowed me to earn a decent living for more than a decade, but surviving the office rat race unscathed was no picnic. Early on, I decided a hideout for lunch time was in order, a place to literally disappear from the world during our midday meal breaks. Seldom indeed did finances allow for eating out, and while I could socialize in the break room as well as most, I am--and always have been--a bit of a loner at heart.

Flashback to age 9: Behind the log ranch house in Montana, digging a mountain man style cache hole, a bottle-shaped excavation into which I could insert myself. It had a wooden lid that supported the original sod; with that set in place over my head, I vanished from the world. No one, not even Mom or my two younger sisters, ever knew. My first real hideout.

Flashback to age 12: At the local school, a combination building housing grades 1 through 12. During lunch break, no one frequents the gym. We are not supposed to use the tunnel from the classrooms except to reach gym class, but I do. Behind its great velvet curtain, the stage where school plays are performed is not quite private enough. Ah, but that ladder up the wall--exit stage left! Up through the trapdoor into the dark storage attic. Hideout.

In these places, Soul is free to relax, to roam the imagination where anything is possible, friendly girls are plentiful, and I am the most powerful, wise, wonderful being in all of creation.

But we grow up, put away childish things. Supposedly. Now it is 1970. No longer a working cowboy in boots and blue jeans but an office stiff in suit and (choke!) tie, I must conform.

Oh, yeah? Watch me! Watch me...disappear.

My first office employment was as a commercial insurance underwriting trainee for Aetna Life & Casualty--often called "Big Aetna"--in Spokane, Washington. Our operations occupied all of the top floor (the 7th) and part of another. It was a good job as such things go.

For a country boy, however, it was also inspiring. It inspired me to stare out of the north windows and think, "There's got to be more to Life than this!"

There was. When you work on the seventh floor in an elevator-powered building, few coworkers compete to use the stairs. Above even that floor, in the stairwell, yet another half-flight of stairs led to one final door. I thought about that--and then, one day, after listening closely for the sound of any other humans who might be in the vicinity--opened that final door.

It led to the roof, obviously. No, I couldn't quite managed to lunch on the roof; the tiptop exit was locked. But with the entry door closed as well, the 20 foot climb between the two became a pitch dark, tomb silent, you got it...hideout.

A place to replenish, take a deep breath, do a spiritual contemplation...then return to my open bay desk to finish out the workday.

 Flash forward to San Diego, 1985.  Social life in the Great American Insurance office wasn't bad.  Actual friendships developed, even a brief dating relationship with one coworker who happened to be between husbands at the same time I was between wives.  Three of us frequently played UNO while we wolfed down our homemade sandwiches and chips from the vending machine in the hall.

But still.

The GA branch office sat at the end of a cul-de-sac which also boasted a T.G.I. Fridays (which I could never afford) and several other office buildings.  A few strides beyond, however--and the California brush country took over.  I found Heaven on Earth just 3 minutes of walking time from the office door:  Deep in a bit of a thicket, there was a tiny opening over which slender little trees bent their branches in a protective attitude.  There was a place where I could lie back on the leaves, shucking only my blazer, loving the gentle breeze and softly waving leaves that patterned the deep blue sky above my head.  Hideout. 

Restoration.

 There have been other hiding places--many others--that allowed me essential bits of R & R downtime over the decades.

 --A riverbank in Eugene, Oregon, absolutely unseen by Valley River Mall shoppers and office workers.

--Various spots in the mountains of Montana and Colorado plus the Black Hills of South Dakota.  (Drop me off near Custer, South Dakota, give me five minutes head start, and you'll never see me again.)

--Even places in the rattlesnake-infested desert acreage my wife and I now call home.

Rat race or no rat race, much has been written in recent years about the "man cave", the need any human male possesses for a private spot to call his own.  The man who chooses to vanish entirely, however, is often condemned by society--since his disappearance is often as permanent as he can make it, leaving vulnerable dependents behind.

The other kind of disappearing act, though?  My kind, where you're not really gone long enough for most folks around to realize you weren't there in the first place?  It's hard to say how many guys do that...because, if we're good enough at it, only the shadow knows.

Hideout.  It's a valuable tool for surviving the office rat race.  Heck, it's helpful when it comes to surviving Life in General.

Where's Waldo?