Foosball

In an office, whether you work hard or hardly work, you definitely play hard. Folks find different ways to do that. Smoking, coffee breaks, browsing, water-cooler-gossiping or even office romance are some commonly used ways to "play" hard. Mine for the past few years has been Foosball.

Whoever invented Foosball has to be a genius. For that matter all sports inventors have to be geniuses. Except for maybe Curling...but that's just me.

Coming back to playing hard and Foosball for the past few years it has been my outlet. My stress reliever at work and I truly enjoyed it. I do alright and have definitely improved since I started playing but I have hit what you would call a plateau. I play with the same set of folks and do not try to do anything different so that is somewhat expected. And I do not have any aspirations to jump into amateur Foosball championships. Although that does seem like a good thing to pursue during my mid-life crisis when I do decide to grow up.

However, sometimes life throws at you challenges that will just leave you exhausted. In the past few weeks that came in the form of a construction job in the office. We received an email saying the workers have to work on the roof so need access through the glass doors. That meant the Foosball table had to be moved but the email specifically mentioned that it will be merely moved and will suffer no outage in playing time. That allayed any fears us Foosball enthusiasts had.

It started with the table being dirty from tar and dust. We could clean that off and that we did. We continued our game that day and no harm was done. Next day things got worse. We came to kick off our usual game and boom, all the Foosball balls were gone! Who would do such a thing? Such a sick joke right? We managed to find couple of old balls. They were dented and slowed down the game but what are you going to do? We didn't want to risk the balls again so decided to take them back to our desks. As soon as we got back to our desks we ordered new tornado Foosball balls.

You would think that things got better from here right? No, I only wish. We come in the next day and find that the Foosball table is really dirty and it took few minutes to clean it off. We complained and the most enthusiastic one among us went and complained to the office manager. Next day, our new Foosball balls arrive and we walk into the lunch room to kick off a game with them. How exciting!!! Oh no! We find the table wrapped in a big plastic sheet. And a notice that says do not use until Nov 25. That means no Foosball until after Thanksgiving. What the...As we contemplate removing the plastic sheet our office manager comes by and says no, can't do that. "Read the notice", she says. "You guys complained about the table so now don't complain when we are trying to protect it". Argh!!! Completely bummed out, we walk back to our desks...

And there it sits...wrapped in a cold plastic sheet...unable to live its life...unable to fulfill its destiny...crying out to us...

We shall soon be reunited...soon. 9 days and counting! Games begin Nov 30.