It was January 3rd, 2011. I woke at 7am, far earlier than I'd woken in... months? Perhaps years. It was a new year, and I had a new plan: don't look at any screens after 9:15pm. Turn off the lights and go to sleep at 10pm. Wake no later than 7am, and go to work before the kids woke up. Leave work early in the afternoon.

Okay, I didn't wake at 7am. I woke at 7:30. Still 7:30am, mind you. But I was running late.

Traffic was light - astonishingly light - and I got to work in a mere 30 minutes. I drove into the basement parking lot and there were perhaps five cars there. Parking had become an issue at work over the last few months; could it really be that there were so few people there at 8am? Or was it just that everyone was running late on this, the first work day of the year, the first day after an extremely long weekend that probably involved drunkenness or debauchery or both for a good percentage of my colleagues?

I saw a former team-mate walk to the elevator. He was gone by the time I walked across the lot, so I took the elevator by myself. I came out into the cafeteria, and saw... no one.

No one at all.

A door opened, and a security guard walked out. He barely glanced at me as he walked through the empty cafeteria and disappeared around a corner.

There was no food - no eggs, no oatmeal, no pastries. There were sounds from the kitchen, but no humans to be seen.

I found an empty couch to sit on - all the couches were empty, as were the chairs - and pulled out my laptop. I signed myself on to the corporate VPN (necessary since I was trying to access our intranet over WiFi.) And I looked up 2011 holidays.

January 3rd, 2011, was the first holiday of the year. A continuation of the time off for the new year. Apparently they had expected me to drink more.

I had plenty of work to do. But I couldn't bear the thought of doing it, especially not without breakfast. I went back to the elevator.