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I enter the office.
Past the reception there is a faint smell of French fries, and I instinctively look to my right, to Little Bernie's cubicle, where there's always some food to go around. Picture the ketchup stains. Little Bernie, as you might imagine is anything but Little. In our politically correct, Little Bernie's nickname is only whispered. Politically correct means to avoid saying it to your face, not to avoid saying it.
Little Bernie is fat. Even more: he's huge. But he is one of the privileged happy fat people: he is fat, but he doesn't give a shit. He is fat in a relaxed, Homer Simpson kind of way. Whenever he hears somebody's gone on a diet, Little Bernie laughs his ass off. There goes another one, he says. Good for him.
Me, on the other hand, I'm not fat, but I'm not happy either. I'd give up my apparently trim waistline in a second if I could be as happy as Bernie. He is a Happy Person, always walking about with a smile and some kind of edible solid, a sandwich and whatnot, always seeing the brighter side of life. Now that's priorities for you.
As I walk into the cubicle-maze I am greeted with familiar sounds and smells, and sometimes I catch the odd flock of hair or hand holding a phone, but I rarely see anybody's face. Cubicles are good for hiding. They are better for not seeing what's around you. We cubicle-dwellers are The New Blind. Our sense of sight might be worthless, but smell and hearing get bumped up a notch. A dog would have a hell of a time here. We spend hours surrounded by thin walls covered with gray fabric, always knowing what's happening, but always afraid to appear as if we know. We try to filter out phone conversations, curses, the occasional sob, but we can't, and, in reality, we don't want to. We want to know, we want to imagine what's happening a few feet away without asking. Welcome to the perverted sensory peepshow that is corporate life.
As I reach my cubicle I find Alice in the hallway, if hallway is the right term when the ceiling above you seems to have no corners and no boundaries. She is speaking on her cell phone, and raises her eyes for a minute to greet me in a wink. She always does this. A phone call in the hallway is way more important than a phone call in his cubicle, because people can see her. This is a personal matter. I have a life, see?
I walk past her with a nod and enter my cubicle. On my chair there's a fedex package. It says, in big, thick red letters: URGENT. I pick it up and throw it on the desk somewhere. I sit down. I smell something fried, again. Little Bernie's cubicle is too far away, so someone else is the culprit. Suddenly, I'm hungry. Ignore the pain.
I Press Any Key and the monitor wakes up. Login, Password. Don't use words that are easy to guess, IT's code for words that are not easy to remember. Right. Where would the Post-It industry be without passwords?
The screen finally comes to life and the program is loaded. The Land of Productivity extends before me. I concentrate. Click, click, click. Shit, I lost.
Minesweeper is not as easy as it seems.
oOo
As I click and right-click to sweep the mines, As I play, I fancy myself an Important Person, someone who rids the world of Evil, like many a Bush administration official. Every now and then I look to the side, to that URGENT package that arrived earlier. There's something inviting about a package you didn't expect sitting unopened over a pile of reports.
A flash. A sad yellow face. Game Over. In a split-second of rage, I close the window. Luckily, my computer is state-of-the-art. Minesweeper loads fast in state-of-the-art machines.
But I don't reload the program. Instead, I slide across three feet of carpet on my chair to the other side of my L-shaped desk, and I pick up the package.
The label says: Operations and Analysis Division.
It's my division. I never understood why they call it a division. What this is is more like a piece, the result of a division. A piece, built of a few hundred people, or a respectable bodycount as They say.
After Operations and Analysis Division, the label says: c, slash, o, Ted Allen.
It's for my manager.
This is the third URGENT package I have received for him this week.
It's Tuesday.
Always, always these stupid games. I can never quite understand what is going on. This is similar to what Alice does, speaking on her cellphone in the hallway, but slightly more ridiculous. After all, there is a chain of command, sort of. I know that he's a step above me in the food chain. I have to obey. Whether I do or don't is beyond the point. But he doesn't want just that. He wants respect.
Well, we all have dreams.
I dump the package in the trash, and go back to my computer.
oOo
My next task is email. The lifeblood of corporations, as they say. A new era in communications. I know what they mean, believe me. But before the lifeblood can flow, before the new era can set in, I always have to begin reading my list of new emails by deleting the usual junk that makes up ninety percent of it. The greatest hits of my inbox include:
Annual Progress Report, from allent.
Fwd: Annual Progress Report, from allent.
Re: Annual Progress Report, from allent.
Casual Friday Clothing Standards, from lettonm.
Meeting on the 26th -- confirm, from blj.
Re: Meeting on the 26th -- confirm, from banisters.
Re: Meeting on the 26th -- confirm, from caseyj.
Long story short, there are about ten of those. The last one is:
Re: meeting on the 26th [CANCELED], from blj.
By the way, the 26th is a Sunday.
After all of the offending emails are deleted I get to the juicy ones, with subjects like:
Be Your Own Boss, from Tony Dunne.
Clean up your bad credit ONLINE?, from Mika Deloy.
Enlarge your penis. Guaranteed!, from myself. Funny. I don't remember sending it. Schizophrenia must be settling in.
You're paying too much, from Kate. Yeah, tell me about it, Kate.
And then, just like that, my day goes down the toilet. The next subject says:
I'm leaving you, from No sender.
My first thought is, Wait! Don't leave me!. Then rationality kicks in, as I realize that Jordan would never be so trite.
I read the email slowly, expecting to find information on the love of my life, the kind you never find, the kind that will leave you before you find it. Instead, there's all of these FACTS about why women leave me, and it ends recommending... penis enlargement.
I can smell the conspiracy. Who among the cubicle dwellers that surround me is spreading lies? Don't worry, I'll find you, sooner or later. Then I'll show you why you're wrong.
There is one more email that I haven't deleted yet. It's from allent, my manager, and it says:
PACKAGE???
I look back, at the flat whiteness emerging from my trashcan. Hmm.
I'm about to turn around and pick it up when a soft chime calls for my attention. I look back at the monitor. It's Sally, sending an instant message.
These interruptions... How can I ever get any work done?
oOo
After my mysterious instant messaging incident, I had to go out for a while. I picked up some folders, put some random printouts in them, necessary cover for my escape, and I ran. Past the cubicles, and the sweet-smelling fabric. Past the phone chatter. Hallway. Elevator. Lobby.
The sun.
The street feels surreal every time I arrive in it. Any street. Day or night, out of my apartment or out of the office. Nothing belongs to me, but nothing is distant. The sounds, the people, the asphalt, everything is immediate and close. I want to hold it all in one hand, then hide it in my pocket. Or toss it away, maybe.
I walk slowly. Suits and faces blur past me as in a dream. When I reach the corner I look into the pub I never enter since it's too close to work, and I dive in. As the door closes behind me, the noises and sounds of the street morph into a low rumble and the world becomes a tv show seen through tinted windows.
I sit in a corner and I call out for a coffee, the barman nods. By the time the coffee reaches me, a cigarette is already in my mouth, lit. As I taste the coffee I read the warning label on the package. SMOKING CAUSES CANCER, it says. Then comes a faint voice inside my head: thank you, come again!
What was it that Sally said? First of all, after the niceties were exchanged, I'm not sally. That stood out.
Then, I'm looking for a package, and then, are you sure?
Of course I was sure, I said, as I looked back at the package.
Then Sally went offline. No more Sally.
The smoke paints tiny pools of turbulence in the air. Wasn't Sally on vacation? I don't know, and I start to wish I wouldn't nod off at every meeting. And if it wasn't she behind the screens, and the cables... I wonder...
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