Lafayette Street, June 2007

Have you ever seen those post-apocalyptic movies that depict a collapsed society, where normally valuable things have become valueless and a few scattered survivors scavenge among the relics?

That’s what my office has been like this week.

Virtually everyone had already moved out of our building, and we were among the last few people on our floor. Each day on Thursday and Friday I went down to the main office area, which had already moved, and walked through the wreckage of dusty desks, abandoned chairs and heaps of unwanted or outdated office supplies.

People left an assortment of personal oddities behind - coffee mugs, old jackets, a sparkly pair of Steve Madden shoes. There were dozens of florist’s vases, remnants of bouquets delivered and now long dead.

I did take to scavenging, grabbing a package of copy paper here or a box of paper clips there. It seemed a shame to leave useful things behind. Periodically I saw other wanderers across the room, picking through the debris on their own.

It really did feel like something out of “28 Days Later.”

Now, even that post-apocalyptic period has come to an end. Friday was our last day in the building, and in the afternoon all our stuff - including my scavenged paper and paper clips - went into big plastic crates. We worked as best we could at empty desks, and then went home.

On Monday we report to the new glass palace in the sky!