I work in a “secure area” (OK, all our areas were secure, but some a little more than others). Right outside the double locked doors was a restroom. If I had to go, I didn’t have far to go. At some point, I believe it started when I was part of a FitBit Challenge (contest to see who could get the most steps in a week), I started using the next restroom further away. And then afterward, I started walking even further away, going downstairs, walking back, going upstairs, and returning to my desk.

Sometimes when doing these laps I would pass by people. “Good morning”. And by the time I did my loop, I would pass them… again. “Good morning, again.”

There are people that would walk the halls for exercise. You could tell these folks because they would have their headphones on, walk down a hallway, get to the end, NOT go through the doors, turn around and come back. I didn’t go to that extreme, but I felt that the few hundred extra steps I took helped, if ever so little.

But the problem wasn’t the walking. No, the problem were the obstacles. Not too often, every once in a while, there would be a group of walkers – no, strollers – that would walk three abreast. But the hallway was only wide enough for three. And by “strollers’ mean mean they weren’t walking like they were on a mission – like I did, or the exercisers – but rather like they were in a park on a sunny day in mid-Spring, chatting about the latest “Real Housewives” or some other program du jour. And with that was the complete lack of paying attention to their environment – that they aren’t the only people in the building and they MAY actually be in the way.

Much like these folks, there are those that don’t know how to walk down the hall either – or more to the point, around corners. Rather than stay to the right and swing wide when taking a corner, they cut it. That’s a problem when someone is coming in the other direction THAT YOU CAN’T SEE. I am not a huge guy, but I’m not that tiny either – six foot, about one eighty-five. It was all I could do to keep from leveling some of these people. I guess it is too much to ask that they add four steps to there path so as to not get hurt or hurt someone.

Certainly won’t miss these folks. It doesn’t mean I won’t encounter them in my day to day life, my visits to the supermarket or the mall, or wherever life takes me, but the frequency of these encounters after retirement will certainly be reduced.