There's Nothing Funny About Carpeting

Life in the Boomer Lane’s real estate manager suggested yesterday that she should write about the wall-to-wall carpeting currently being installed in the office.  Wall-to-wall carpeting?  Instead, how about my writing about flossing?  Or socks?  Or grocery coupons?  Any of those topics would be more compelling than wall-to-wall carpeting.

To make matters worse, the carpeting isn’t all that attractive, so LBL couldn’t even turn it into a decorating column.  She asked her manager why the company didn’t just install the same carpeting upstairs as was currently on the lower level.  He explained that the downstairs carpeting was installed when the market was riding high.  It is light, plush, interesting.  The new carpeting reflected “current market conditions.”  This would be dark, depressing, and flat. (Note to company owners: My words, not his.  He is always upbeat, attentive, supportive.  Give him a raise.)

So, how to write about carpeting?  LBL could talk about the Hunky Carpets Guys who are doing the installing, but she’s not sure her manager had that in mind.  And to get to the Hunky Carpet Guys (Ronaldo, Roberto, and Rudolfo) in order to do an interview, she would have to climb over a lot of carpet debris and tools and have a fairly good chance of falling on her face before she ever got to them.

LBL thinks her manager wanted her to talk about how, in anticipation of the carpet installation, all of us Realtors had to transfer everything we had under our desks onto the top of our desks, disconnect our computers, and in effect, leave the premises.  Since many agents could be featured on TV shows about hoarders, this was an interesting proposition. The agent LBL shares a space with, cleared her area when LBL wasn’t there.  LBL arrived to find a box the size of a refrigerator carton plunked on her desk.

We received a lot of advance warning about the need to move everything, thereby resulting in virtually everyone (except Refrigerator Box Realtor) doing so about 15 minutes before Ronaldo, Roberto, and Rudolfo arrived. This was equivalent to spraying insecticide on an ant colony when the ants were carrying their eggs from one location to another.  It wasn’t a pretty sight, and you can bet that some of those eggs weren’t going to make it to wherever they were going.

So, the bottom line is that LBL is out of ideas about writing anything clever about wall-to-wall carpet installation.  She is just waiting for the signal that can can put her desk back in order and hope that when she does so, she’ll be able to find everything without a GPS.  And it certainly will be a relief to get the refrigerator box off her desk.  Best of all, she will be able to get to the pretzel jar in the office kitchenette without having to leap over giant rolls of carpeting, with Ronaldo, Roberto, and Rudolfo watching.