The invitation arrived on my phone two weeks ago, while I was on another call. It was for the Reporter’s all-staff meeting, Tuesday at 10 a.m., Conference Room B. Under “location,” someone had typed: “IN PERSON (Glenn, this means you).”
I have worked for this newspaper for 26 years. I have been in the newsroom, by the most generous estimate, since 2011. By the estimate on my building badge, which has a photograph of a man I recognize as a younger, more stationary me, it was 2004. By the estimate of the newsroom’s receptionist, who has worked there since 2009 and who says she has never seen me, it has not happened yet.
I took the invitation seriously. I rearranged three interviews, all of them by phone. I booked a flight that landed at 7:50 a.m., rented a car at 8:30, and at 9:41 a.m. I pulled into the parking garage beneath our building, on level P3, and called my editor to tell her I had arrived.
The call dropped. The garage is concrete, and I have since learned it is the only place in the continental United States where I have never had a signal. I drove up to P2 and called again. It dropped again. On P1, I reached her, and she said, “Where are you?” I said, “Downstairs.” There was a long silence, and then she said, “Downstairs where?” in the tone of a person who has been told something impossible by a reliable source.
I took the elevator to the lobby. The elevator, too, dropped the call. The lobby has a security desk, a potted ficus that I am told has been there longer than I have been away, and, beside the elevators, a white courtesy telephone. I showed the guard my badge. He looked at the photograph, then at me, then at the photograph, and called upstairs to confirm I was employed. They told him they would need to call me back. He asked them at what number. They gave him my cell phone number. My cell phone rang. I answered it, standing in front of him, and confirmed that I was me.
He let me through to the courtesy phone.
From the courtesy phone, I called up to Conference Room B, which is, according to the building directory, 40 feet away, up one flight of stairs, and to the left. My editor answered and told me that the meeting had just been moved to a conference call, because so many people were traveling. She read me the dial-in number. I dialed it, from the lobby, and joined the all-staff meeting of my own newspaper, 40 feet from where it was being held, with 31 colleagues, at least 11 of whom were in the conference room and had also dialed in, for the audio.
It is very hard to be in a room when everyone in the room has called in.
Shortly after 10:20 a.m., a new voice joined the call and announced itself as Dr. Chad Brickhouse of the Institute for Common Sense. No one had invited him. He said it was just common sense to be on the call, and that he could not stay long, because he was at a youth hockey rink. Nobody asked how he had gotten the number. I had a pretty good idea. He has every number. I believe some of them are his.
The meeting was about a new coffee machine on the fourth floor. I am told it is very good. I asked whether someone could describe it to me over the phone, and four of my colleagues did, at length, and I now believe I have a clearer picture of that coffee machine than anyone who has drunk from it.
At 10:52, my editor said there was a story breaking in another part of the country and asked whether anyone was near an airport. I said I was 40 feet from her. She said, “Great, so you’re closest to the car.” I was. I went back down to P3, where the call dropped, and I drove to the airport, and I have not been back.
I am filing this from Gate A9. On the way out, I passed the courtesy phone. It was ringing. I did not pick it up. I knew who it was, and I knew he would call back.