Gone Modular

I love wooden furniture. You see, I grew up hanging around my grandfather's home-office, where a stately, polished narra table held his neatly-filed legal briefs. The table never seemed to run out of surprises. Just when I thought I had opened just about every drawer, there would be one more secret compartment--an extended writing drawer perhaps, or yet another drawer within.

Because I am partial to wood, there was a time when I thought modular furniture were depressing. There's something a tad too impersonal about the sleek dividers, the uniform worktops and the ergonomic "executive" chairs. And probably because I've seen a tad too many movies, modular meant corporate power plays and disturbed--hell, psychotic--junior executive types on the verge of unleashing nuclear bombs.

Well guess what? Our office--the entire city hall, actually--has suddenly gone modular. With a wave of the contractor's wand, we went from bureaucratic to call-centerish, minus the phones and the twang, of course. There were the initial frayed nerves and flaring tempers from having to cram who-knows-how-many years of stash into defined spaces. Glass-topped office tables were stripped of pictures of children and good times and saints, and there was a tug-o-war of sorts as the more senior among us held on to their stuff and tables were hauled off to who knows where.

The dust of carting off the old and installing the new has settled, and "property" lines have been drawn. I have settled into my space and have since adopted a modular mindset. I have no choice, after all. Unless city hall decides otherwise, I will have to do all my slaving and griping and working on this table until retirement. Which, if you ask me, is still a long way off.