I did the unthinkable today. I amazed myself with my own stupidity by managing to get myself lost in my office – a place I have worked at for the last two and a half years. It’s true. And all this, because I had the brainwave of taking the staircase and getting some exercise. Isn’t that a just and mature thought? Now you know why I got punished for it.

My office is located on the top two floors of the building I work in, with mine being on the fifth floor. Since I get transport, the cab drops me off in the basement. So I get this fantastic idea of using the stairs just as the cab halts and jauntily walk towards the fire exit instead of the elevator.

See, what you have to understand is I don’t care much about why staircases are marked the way they are. You wouldn’t expect them to carry signs saying, “People who wish to walk, hop on!” Of course they’d carry a fire exit sign.

So the climb begins. There I am. Self-satisfied, listening to my iPod, climbing two stairs at a time and determined to well…beat it. I finally reach the fifth floor but it does not look like the staircase I take when I want to go the fourth floor. A little stumped by the new challenge, I look at a random co-worker through the glass of the door in front of me. She stares and looks like she wants to alert the security personnel; I make it worse for her by frantically trying to open the door. But, as you may have foreseen that misery needs to befall upon me, the damn door does not open.

After carefully weighing my options and considering that the lady with rattled nerves may very well have alerted other people about a possible intruder, I walk down all the bloody way. I get off at the first floor thinking, that’s it, enough of this nonsense. So I enter the first floor basement and I see a stand alone elevator and am wondering what that is because I’ve never seen it before.

I walk towards it and wait for it to come and get me. Come elevator, and the guys with stalls in my office canteen are staring at my face and telling me, not this one woman. Go to your elevator. By now, you agree, that I’ve sufficient ammunition to blow up the building. Anyway, fury notwithstanding, I walk back to the stairs and reach the ground floor, get off the darned fire exit and take an elevator all the way back to my office.

Yes, a fabulous beginning to my day. But I shall not be deterred. I shall conquer it. In the true Christite spirit, I shall march on. Hmpf!