American Ingenuity

There comes a time in everyone's life when the odd things are what make us ecstatic. Recently, my boss and I (yes, another "work" tale), were given a new door to our office. Now, you would have to understand what the old door was like. The door was solid steel and had a fire rating of 4 hours. There were no windows, and it was impossible to unlock the door--it was permanently locked--entry was with a key only. The key was the size of a small car and weighed nearly as much. (Okay, I exaggerate, but it was huge and was on our key rings with 11 other keys.) If someone wanted to come in, we had to constantly get up and open the door. We even put signs on the door to let people know whether or not we were there.

Eventually, I got tired of getting up and down to open the door all the time, so I designed a doorstop. I took one hanging folder and folded it in half and then folded it a couple more times, and then folded it again. Then I wrapped it repeatedly with about 40 rubber bands. When I stuck it under the door, the door stayed open. Voila....a doorstop!

Our new door is pretty exciting. It has a window, albeit only 5" wide by 24" high, but it is a window. Not only are we able to unlock the door so that people can enter, we can actually SEE who is coming in. It was truly exciting....until we discovered that the manufacturer put the window in backwards. The screws to remove the window were on the outside. Hmmm, that means that someone could remove the screws, take out the window, reach in and open the door.

Never fear, however! Our Maintenance gurus came to the rescue and put in screws that cannot be removed unless you have a special tool.

Good ol' American ingenuity: creating doorstops from hanging folders and screws that can't be removed! Wow! Isn't America great!