This is what it's like after you leave a place

Remarkably similar to the way it was before you left. I've wondered, in the past, "what was the office at my old job like the day after I walked out the doors for the last time?" As someone who has seen a lot of coworkers come and go in the last three months (including one more today--leaving of his own accord for greener pastures), what always amazes me is how the steady hum of CPUs, the constant clacking of keyboard keys, the slow drip of the coffeemaker, and the swish of trousers and khakis as people quickly walk down the hall to get to meetings, does not change one iota. And if anyone misses the departed, there is no indication. Within a week's time, they barely remember so-and-so who used to sit by the printer. Someone else starts shouldering your responsibilities and pretty soon no one can remember a time when that person didn't do your job.

It may be different in more specialized professions, but at the company store, well...

This is not a sad post, by the way. It just actually helps me to know that someday in the not-too-distant future, I'll be moving on, and that no one here will miss a beat because of it. There's an appropriate sense of detachment in that.

There is the scene in Jerry MaGuire where the office is suspended as he makes his awkward good-bye, a timid Renee Zellwegger trailing behind him. No one moves a muscle. And as soon as the glass doors shut behind them, the drones return to the frenzy without giving any thought to what just happened, because they don't have the luxury of overanalyzing one man's and one woman's departure.