At work, I was talking to Rita. She mentioned that she’d recently moved from one cube to another but hadn’t finished putting stuff in the “flippy thing”.

“Flippy thing?” I asked.

Rita opened and closed her mouth a few times but no sounds came out. She also waved her hands about. She gave up and walked me over to a cube and pointed to the cupboard that was mounted at the top of the cube wall. The door of the cupboard could be opened by flipping it up and sliding it back over the top of the cupboard.

I said “Oh, you mean the…”. Now I was stuck for the word. I almost called it a cupboard but I knew that no one else would call it that.

We both stood there, trying to remember the word for the thing but to no avail. I walked over to Sarah, the administrative assistant, pointed at the “flippy thing” and asked if she knew what it was called.

She did know. As far as she was concerned, it was called an overhead.

That seemed incomplete. “An overhead what?” I asked.

“Just overhead”.

I spared her a discussion of adjectives and why they need nouns and just thanked her instead. I went and googled “cube overhead” and found link after link about overhead cabinets.

I could finally get back to work.