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Office Collision Avoidance Cards

Crash bang wallop what a picture.
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The fantasy:
It's five to five on Friday and handsome, golden-hearted, yet somehow still single Tim, the polo-playing playboy from Projects, is hurtling toward the fax machine with 120 sheets of Incredibly Important Legal Documents which need to be with the Registrars before close of business or all hell will break loose.

Around the corner, dragging her heels, in a world of her own, comes lovelorn, bespectacled Deirdre From Filing. Her feet are heavy, her heart is lonely and she's carrying 360 sheets of Incredibly Important Legal Documents which need to be filed, like, *yesterday.*

Deirdre steps out just as Tim reaches the blind junction of corridors, they collide, sending documents slicing and fluttering through the air and Deirdrie's dowdy glasses to the cheap carpet. Both parties crouch to pick up their burdens, red faced and flustered. Reaching for a paper, Tim's hand touches Deirdre's, eyes meet and wow! electricity in the air. Tentative conversation is struck, a connection is formed. One year later, a wedding is planned.

The reality:
Some dozy, shuffling fuckwit steps *right out* into your path causing a collision as you're racing for the fax, resulting in a flurry of paper reshuffling, weak apologies, late submission of a multi-million pound bid, much narrowing of the eyes and sotto voice expleting.

The solution:
Embed in the now commonplace secutiry swipe cards with mutual proximity sensors, which light up/vibrate when someone is nearing you at a dangerous rate.

calum, Feb 27 2004

(?) What is a "stiff arm tackle"? http://www.crabfell...PSUfaq.htm#stiffArm
[Monkfish, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]


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Annotation:







       //mutual proximity sensors// with send/receive lonely heart status indicators.
thumbwax, Feb 27 2004
  

       Bummer. I thought you were suggesting small hand-held signs with phrases like "One side, fool!" or "Move it, fatass!" for todays executives to flash at underlings when right-of-way is in question. (Or held at arms lenght to precede said executive around blind corners..) Fishbone for attaching more beeping, vibrating things to people for purposes other than eroticism.
MuddyBuddy, Feb 27 2004
  

       Though this would remove the entertaining Bullet time maneouvres required to avoid collisions at present.
DocBrown, Feb 27 2004
  

       Would Tim and Deidre meet? Would their Office Collision Avoidance Cards malfunction in time? Or would they be like two sheaves of paper passing in the night?
k_sra, Feb 27 2004
  

       I confess to disappointment. I was expecting something much more grandiose and wasteful of resources. To wit, a chip in your security card is tracked by means of GPS and your position in the building constantly monitored by Office Traffic Controllers located in a vast computer complex on the roof. Each employee has an earpiece through which the office traffic controllers can relay navigation instructions in order for them to avoid possibly fatal employee on employee impacts.
DrBob, Feb 27 2004
  

       [MuddyBuddy], there's no beeping. And perhap the vibration caused by physical proximity might, in fact, be a skewed version of the potentially erotic stimulation that comes from socially forbidden bodily contact.   

       [k_sra], that really depends on whether they are destined to marry. I had visions of Tim, feeling restricted and listless, having a midlife crisis affair with teenage trainee Tina, while Deidre withers, trapped, unappreciated in a life of domestic servitude. I've done them a favour, I reckon.   

       [DrBob], that's the sort of overspend you get only in government offices, not in the busy corporate world where deadlines are more specific than "och, whenever, like."
calum, Feb 27 2004
  

       Seems like motion sensers at the wall corners will do the trick.
bkornele, Feb 27 2004
  

       Apologies for the self-churn but I've just realised, just as I collided with some mopey type called Deirdre, that if everyone in an office wore a collar with a bell on it, like a cat might, then the office would be safer, more randomly mellifluous and, importantly, more cost effetcive.   

       As you were.
calum, Apr 08 2004
  

       Your reality's a bit off. You need Deirdre to be carrying a freshly filled mug of hot coffee or soup.   

       Cat bells would be annoying. My one practical (sorry) suggestion is to have a wireless device installed at intersections and corners to turn on the devices, so that you aren't stuck with something vibrating in your pocket throughout a conference. Unless you're into that.
Worldgineer, Feb 09 2005
  

       Oooh yeah, I reckon I could be into that.
salachair, Feb 10 2005
  


 

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