Several months ago I noticed a little overspray of paint next to one of the elevators on the 72nd floor of the tallest building West of the Mississippi. Just a little paint that snuck through the masking when they painted the elevator doors and frame. Just a smidge of gold in a vast field of off-white. Or perhaps a titch of harvest wheat snuck into the ivory cream bone lace cotton natural vanilla field. A splotch. It would catch my eye only when the elevators were a bit slow and I had a moment to stare at nothing in particular. It would catch my eye because I've done my share of painting, residential and commercial. In commercial space all the floors look the same and melt together to the contractors doing the endless repetitive tasks that must be done to complete an office tower or hotel or apartment building. But to the tenants and renters who stare at those walls all day and pay to stare at those walls, god truly is in the details. The devil is in there too.
Several weeks ago I took a post-it note and wrote "touch up" with an arrow and held it in my hand on the way up and almost put it on the wall but I held onto it laughing out loud at the thought. Then the next time I went there I stuck it on the wall next to that overspray next to that elevator on the 72nd floor of that very tall building. Just as I did an attorney from one of the law firms on the floor came out of his office and saw me put something on the wall. He paused and looked at the post-it, at the overspray ( that he had most likely never noticed ) then at me in a double take questioning way thinking maybe I just knocked the note off the wall and I was pausing to replace it, then he got on his elevator down to a double tall non-fat vanilla extra hot no foam.
That post-it stayed there for a few weeks. Until finally it got someone's attention.
I had forgotten about it until today, when I noticed it was gone and the overspray was gone too, touched up, corrected, painted over. Touched Up. My guess is, if a tenant in the building went through the proper channels and placed a work order with the management and requested some paint touch up that small, that tiny, that minor, that insignificant in a 76 story building it wouldn't have been handled any faster than it was when a bike messenger stuck up a post-it note as a joke.
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