May 04th, 2021

Tim got himself a new desk recently.   It is pretty nifty!  It can be a regular sitting at it to work desk or, at the push of a button, a standing desk so he can work standing up for awhile.   And then to make it even more interesting,  there is a balance board to stand on (if you wish) that came with it.  Tim likes the balance board and uses it often. 

I think it's a brilliant idea, the convertible desk.  Each of Tim's work days tend to be very long which means he spends hour upon hour upon hour, trapped in one room, hunched over a desk or on the phone, starring at various monitors, essentially in the same position all day long.  That cannot be good for anybody.  Having the option to, whenever he chooses, change it up and stand for a few hours instead of sitting, is genius.  I do not share the same opinion about the balance board, but that's only because I tried to stand on it myself and, well lets just say it did not go well.  But Tim, who at one time was an excellent gymnast, must have a great sense of balance (makes sense right?) because he took to it right away.

When the desk arrived, it came in multiple boxes, as such things do. And he spent some very happy time putting it all together.  Like a kid with an new toy, he seemed to be genuinely having fun as he got it all set up and organized and ready to go for his next work day.  However, that still left his old desk to deal with.  

The old desk was massive!  It practically needed it's own zip code.  But it allowed plenty of room to work, plenty of room for his multiple computer monitors (it looked a little like a rocket launch control room),  plenty of room to eat at his desk while he worked (happens A LOT) and plenty of room for his various piles of stuff. And those are all some of the reasons he choose that desk to begin with I'm sure.

But after 5 years of working at that old football field of a desk, he was ready for a change. So out with the old and in with the new. Yay!  But now what exactly do you do with the old?  One step at a time, first it had to be taken out of the home office which meant, it had to be taken apart. Yes it was so  big it had to be disassembled to get it out of the room.  But Tim took it apart very carefully and taped all of the various bits and pieces to the back of each piece. He is a very organized sort of person, y'see. 

The plan was to drop it off a GoodWill.  It seemed as if we were doing a good deed, offering it up as a donation, or so we thought.  On Saturday, Tim folded all of the seats down in his car and re-arranged things such that the old desk would (only just barely) fit and we set out for our local GoodWill.  Where they promptly turned it away.  The Good Will worker just barely peeked into the open back of the car before he turned it down flat. Tim even offered to re-assemble it for them, but no, they did not want or need a desk.  Dang.

So next we tried a nearby consignment store whose proceeds go to the Humane Society.  Well that is a very worthy cause, we will just donate it to them instead.  This time, Tim stayed with the car and I went inside to talk with them.  Turns out the only people working there were behind the register so I had no choice but to stand in line.  A very long line.  Seems that consignment stores are a big deal for shoppers around here, at least during tourist season.  Eventually I made my way to the front of the line and explained that we had a very nice desk to donate to them.  Whereupon they asked if I had an appointment.  An appointment?  You need an appointment to make a donation?  I could only assume that they thought I wanted them to pick it up.  It makes perfect sense that would require an appointment so I clarified that the desk was in the car, and the car was right there - I pointed out the window.    They sighed and one after the other fired questions at me, Could we trot the desk out to the sidewalk so they could see it through the window? How big was the desk?  What colour was the desk?  What was the desk made out of?  Before I could answer any of the questions, one of the pair decided that no, they did not need or want a desk.  They did offer me a 2021 calendar for my troubles though which I politely declined.

There was only one option left that we could think of, Salvation Army.  There is one in town, off island but still in Venice, so off we went more than a little annoyed that nobody wanted this perfectly fine desk!  Here we are trying to do a nice thing, donating an absolutely lovely desk and we cannot even give it away.  Dang!

Once we arrived at Salvation Army, we followed the donation drop off arrows through the open gate of a chain link fence and past piles after groupings after stacks after collections of the most incredible variety of stuff before finally arriving at the end.  There we found a large beat up and warped wooden table made of odds and ends nailed together.  It was painfully obvious that the table had clearly been outside  in every kinds of weather for years.  And standing beside that table was a fellow examining an old mattress.  Tim got out and talked to him for a few minutes.  First I thought was going to be a flat rejection once again. But eventually Tim sweet talked him into at least checking with his boss.  And so we waited.  And while we waited we couldn't help but see, broken dishes, dolls missing body parts, wonky floor lamps, a stack of old mattresses that would be suitable for "The Princess and The  Pea" and an impressive assortment of knickknacks and, and, and...well from what we saw, surely they would have no problem accepting a pristine and beautiful desk, right?

We decided that if Salvation Army didn't want it, we would just take it back home and figure out something else later.  It could live in the utility room until then. If necessary, we could chop it up into garbage can sized pieces and dispose of it slowly over many, many, MANY weeks if we had to.  We felt pretty discouraged.

We continued to wait.  Hum dilly hum. And eventually the guy came back and gave us a thumbs up.  He pointed at the beat up old knocked together table. So we unloaded the desk from the car and carefully stacked all of the bits and pieces where the fellow had indicated.  It looked strange to see that beautiful desk, even in it's disassembled state laying atop that mouldy, warped, discoloured table. I wondered if they were just going to leave the desk outside in the elements too and the thought kind of made me sad.  But on the other hand, the task was done, completed, checked off the list.

I guess the lesson here is that sometimes it is surprisingly difficult  to do a nice thing.  Oh well.