closed door institutions

Tell me “you can’t miss it” and I will, especially when it come to finding the office at area businesses, schools and churches. I have proven that repeatedly these past few weeks.
When it comes to area businesses, I assume finding the office will be no problem. Business have to be obvious and accessible for their customers.
Most of the time that is true. Visitor parking is allocated close to the front entry way. Just inside the door I find the office or a receptionist to help me.
Then there are the times I miss the obvious. At one industrial complex with several large buildings, I peeked in one building after another until a worker directed me back up the road to the office I had passed.
I never found the people or the office at another place. A small sign read, “ring bell.” I rang the bell. No one ever came.
I gave up using the numerical street numbering logic looking for a business on a disjointed street. I called for detailed instructions and found the industry tucked in an odd corner of the city. The office was obvious, if empty for lunch.
If that business was hard to find, the office at the “Church of the Open Door” was nearly impossible to find. I found the church easily. It had a lot of doors – none of them empty. I tried half a dozen door handles as I walked around from the front of the church, around to the side doors and finally to the back where I found that open door. Inside I meandered worriedly through a maze of empty Sunday School classrooms until I stumbled across a room with a women’s group. I hesitated to interrupt them. Normally I would have left them alone and continued looking, but half a dozen locked doors and the confusion of walking the maze of rooms in that silent building had sent my desperation level soaring. I was more than ready to ask for some guidance. The ladies pointed me to the right path and I finished my errand.
My real challenge to find an office came when I delivered information for our annual Newspapers-in-Education contest to area schools. My memory of those days is a blur of rows of matching brick buildings with huge signs declaring the school’ mission statement and tiny signs designating the school office. I inevitably ended up in the art department, the gymnasium or a hallway of silent classrooms without a teacher or student in sight – and certainly no principal’s office.
It was lunch time the day I stopped at the school with the most hidden office. I parked my car, followed the asphalt past a steel cable stretched out to halt the flow of traffic and discovered a parking spot marked for visitors hidden in an alley between the buildings.
Rows of anonymous, identical doors surrounded me. I asked a passing student, “which way to the office?” They showed me the office. Everyone was out to lunch. A small sign warned me, “state law mandates that visitors must first report to the school office before visiting any classroom.” I will do that, I really will just please help me find the office and have someone there to whom I can report. And then I will report to the office every time I visit a school, a church or an area business.