After attaining seniority at my job, I felt it was time for a reward. In order to continue successfully continue my high level of job performance, what better perq than regular physical exercise? Since I have a birth defect, elbow dysplasia, I argued that exercise was even more important in order to keep down rapidly rising health costs. Unlike in some firms, management was understanding and agreed to my request. But it did take some negotiation.

Having proper health facilities can be hard to achieve. Advanced negotiating skills were required. Sometimes body language speaks volumes.

Another argument I made was that aestetics also plays a role in job satisfaction. Having a beautiful health facility would remove what all agree was a real eyesore.

Since my negotiating skills were excellent, work soon began. But I had to watch out. After all, anything called a "bobcat" could turn mean and attack me at any second.

What's this new dirt road doing here?

Unfortunately, there were phases of the work that restricted my activities. It was hard taking my mandated stretch break when my break room was torn up, a hole put in the ground and rebar placed everywhere.

As a receptionist my duty is to make sure everyone feels welcome. Sometimes, though, the feedback I got from management is that I was being a wee bit overenthusiastic. I found that hard to believe. But management insisted so I had to back off and let the people from "The Pool Company" work.

There are phases of work where I absolutely did not want to get involved. Breathing gunite fumes is not good for my health. I left that job to others.

The people doing the job were very careful to preserve some features that I consider important. I appreciated the care they took.

Before I knew it, a critical phase of work had been finished. Management assured me that I would soon be able to resume my stretch breaks now that a dangerous phase of construction had passed.

Finally I had a chance to inspect the progress to date. It is deeper than I expected. What a long way down to the bottom.

I wonder what they're going to put here? It's mysterious how all the pieces are going to come together.

Except for one thing. The picket fence that I used to use to keep track of the neighborhood gossip is gone. How about boring a couple of holes so I can monitor what is going on? I'd appreciate that quite a bit.

Day after day I sat inside waiting for people to show up and continue working. I was so impatient. Sometimes people did show up and worked but I did not know what was going on. I had to rely on others to keep me informed. What's wrong with management? Shouldn't someone as central to the organization as I be allowed to inspect and sign off on the work? After all, I'm not a mushroom.

Unbeknownst to me, things were moving not as fast as I wanted but faster than I feared. Pretty soon, they were ready to pour my deck. There was much more preparation than I would have guessed, but then the day came.

I never realized how much effort a deck takes. The people working on it certainly earned their dog biscuits. But there was still more work to be done. The gas line, electrical connection and pool cover rails had to be installed.

Finally, the pool's interior finish was being put on. Again it seemed like a cast of thousands was involved.

It had been such a long time that I started wondering if it would ever be done. But finally the day came when I could inspect the facilities. Even though it seemed like what I had asked for, I wanted to be careful in my evaluation. After all, quality requires careful attention to details.