ABSTRACT
Jason Allen left the mayor’s office with a song in his heart and a weight on his shoulders. Earlier that day he had walked eighteen blocks down the lower South Hill into downtown and up five flights of stairs in city hall feeling tired of facing the routines. He now knew that for the next eighteen months his work life would be anything but routine. He had been sitting in his cubicle-the 6-by-8-foot space bordered by movable, fabric-covered room dividers and fully filled with his computer desk, a filing cabinet, and two chairs that his boss, the director of planning, grandly referred to as his office-checking his e-mail, when Mayor Lightfoot’s assistant, Allie, called.
