Because it’s where it is, the office is in a three-story, low-profile building. No doubt it’s not any taller or wider because it had to be approved by the brain trust that is the California Costal Commission.
Anyway, because it’s not some tall, mirrored high-rise office building in Irvine (is there any other kind there?), many people, myself included, use the stairs instead of the elevator to get from floor to floor. It’s faster, it provides a little bit of exercise during the day, and it’s also a few moments of quiet and privacy if there isn’t a lot of up and down traffic.
Also, people don’t point and laugh at you like they would if you took the elevator.
I know what you’re saying to yourself – “Jeff, you’re such a perfect physical specimen, why would you need any exercise, regardless of how little the amount?” While those are kind words you say, the fact that I need an oxygen tank by the time I get to the top of the stairs tells another story.
The last time I went to the gym with any regularity was when my son was born eighteen years ago. It’s fair to say I may have let myself go just a bit in that time. Although I still get mistaken a lot for that guy who plays Thor. From the toes out you can’t tell us apart.
So trotting up the stairs (down is considerably easier) about a hundred times a day for meetings on different floors is a good workout and an incentive to work out even more.
It is some consolation a few of the people I work with, who’ve been here and have been taking the stairs much longer than I have are also winded at the end of their climb.
But like my art director partner Imke says, she takes the stairs because she can. There’ll eventually come a day when she won’t be able to.
And really, that should be incentive enough.
