'Vignettes of Office Life', by Steven McBrearty
THE BOSS
It’s like some Greek or Roman tragedy in the sky, the gods battling among themselves and thunder rolling down from the clouds, an occasional lighting bolt striking at our feet. C is our boss. His office is like some ethereal realm where lightning flickers off in the corners. We are fearful to enter. When we do enter, we get short shrift. He hides behind his giant laptop screen. We get uncomfortable glances and grunts and hostile emanations of body language. It is the body language of somebody who wants you the hell out of there. We leave the office unfulfilled, befuddled, uncertain as to next steps. We slink back to our cubicles and check email and check out craigslist for new job possibilities. We brood. We gripe. We sit back. We do no work for the rest of the day.
Jerrod Walton is C, the office director, a vice president presiding over a five-state region including Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. He is a tall, thin, high-hipped, raw-boned man—in the old four temperaments schematic, he would be a mixture of phlegmatic and choleric humours—and the vibe he emits is sullen and sharp and strident. He parades through the office space with shoulders pulled back like a military man, avoiding eye contact. People veer away as he approaches. Dave is the office manager. Jerrod and Dave seldom speak. When they do, it’s in short, staccato bursts, questions and answers, no elaboration, no chit-chat, no wasted motion. Dave’s role is to ensure that Jerrod has what he needs. The thermostat in his office adjusted. A special lock, a new key for his door. A square meeting table. An oval one. One with an expansion panel in the center. Take out the table completely. Set up a video conference TV. Dave handles these tasks with alacrity, urgency, élan. Along with a certain primal fear that if he fails here they will send his ass packing. The idea of sitting across a desk from Jerrod in a meeting, just the two of them, leaves Dave drenched in dread.
BADGING IN
Badging in, Dave hears a satisfying beep and a click and sees the tiny red light turn green that signals his admission, his entrée into the work club. He is recognized. He exists. He greets receptionist Anita Ramirez with a wave and a smile as he crosses past her fortress-like workstation, a towering, wraparound affair. As office manager, Dave serves as a kind of master sergeant for their work site, lower in rank than the commissioned officers, but arguably more vital in day-to-day operations.
Anita is his ally and early-warning system for conflicts and corporate pandemonium. She is a divorced young Hispanic woman who is raising a preschooler as a single mom, working this job, and attending community college classes nights and weekends. She makes Dave feel like a slacker. Divorced himself, Dave keeps his crush for her under wraps here at the office.
“Hi, Dave,” Anita says, stopping him alongside her desk with a wave and a smile. She wears tiny earpieces and a headset around her neck.
“Hi, Anita,” Dave says. “How’s it going? Nothing falling apart so far>?”
“All good so far,” Anita says.
“The day is young,” Dave says. From long practice, he is well-versed in office clichés. “Keep me posted.’
“I sure will,” she says.
Entering his cube, cluttered but unimproved, like a rented room, Dave switches on his computer to check overnight emails. A lunchtime yoga session in the auditorium. An HR presentation on contributing to 401K’s. Health insurance selections are due! He makes a quick trek around the building, gauging conditions and potential overnight catastrophes. The office space is like a complex machine with many moving parts requiring constant vigilance. Boxes to sign for. Boxes to be moved. Boxes to be sealed up and shipped off. Somebody needing a flash drive or a memory chip. If somebody’s docking station won’t hook up—user error, no doubt—Dave is there. If somebody wants to bitch about office politics or sports or just shoot the breeze, Dave is there for that, too.
Dave reads emails at his desk. Crap—there’s a meeting invite from Jerrod Walton for 3:00 pm today. Dave “accepts,” of course, though with misgivings, apprehension, forebodings of doom. The last place he wants to be at 3:00 pm today is Jerrod Walton’s office. The remainder of his day will be conducted under a malaise of gloom.
But there emerges then a truly critical issue, an existential crisis, calling for immediate and decisive action. The break room is out of coffee! Dave is alerted by text from Anita at the front desk: “CODE RED: COFFEE IN BREAK ROOM ALL WIPED OUT!”
Rounding the turn to the break room, Dave observes a large, raucous crowd milling near the coffee counter, like the crowd scene from A Tale of Two Cities. People are ransacking shelves, foraging in cabinets, attempting to rip open locked drawers with brute force. When Dave arrives, holding the key triumphantly in right hand—he is not above obsequious displays of self-aggrandizement—a loud cheer erupts, but an ugly, sarcastic, discordant cheer, like a Bronx cheer when the manager is kicking dirt on the home plate umpire.
“Finally!” somebody says.
“We’re dying here!” somebody else says.
Dave slides in gracefully, a smooth, practiced move, clearing a path delicately but decisively with his free hand. He unlocks a drawer with the key and pulls out a cardboard box with two dozen packets of Seattle’s Best Colombian, beckoning coquettishly in gleaming red foil. Dave lays the box on the counter. Everybody’s seen wildlife films where locusts swarm over a cluster of trees, denuding them in seconds. This is pretty much like that. Somebody tears a packet open, shaking it into the filter with a violent, agitated motion, coffee grounds sprinkling the countertop. As the coffee drips into the decanter, everyone leans in rapaciously, empty cups held out like paupers seeking alms. Relocking the drawer, Dave steps carefully away from the scene of bedlam, not looking back.
NEXT-DOOR CUBEMATE
Dave’s next-door cubemate Renée is on the phone with her ex-husband Frank, hashing out details of their child custody arrangement. Or perhaps she is talking to her boyfriend Eric, hashing out details of their plans for the night. Those conversations are somewhat interchangeable. The conversations seem part of the background of Dave’s office life, like the wallpaper. He has his own ex-wife, but their two children are grown and married and living on their own, so they talk sparingly, usually involving some financial transaction. He hangs up from these conversations feeling relieved they are no longer married.
Finished with her call, Renée pokes her head around the cube wall for a quick, courtesy hello. Doing this seems to put an imprimatur of okay on their work relationship. Renée is a tallish, gawky sort of blond, 35 maybe, with a hair-sprayed bouffant hairdo, reminiscent of an earlier era. She wears a light white jacket over a low-cut blue blouse today: very demure, very modern office. She is a good neighbor for Dave, Renée, friendly but not overly chatty, interested, but not too inquisitive. She flutters quickly back and forth between their two cubes. She fills a kind of mothering role in Dave’s work life, though she is much younger than him.
“How you doing this morning?” she says.
“Good!” Dave says.
“How was your weekend?” she says.
“It was fine!” Dave says. “Didn’t do much. How was yours.”
“Mine was fine, too,” she says. “I spent the weekend working in the yard.”
“I should be doing more of that,” Dave says.
And that is that. Renée smiles, nods, and disappears back behind the cube wall. Dave tosses out a little wave, but she may have missed it. He hears her clicking away on her keyboard moments later.
THE EVANGELIST
Dave is heading for his cube to check baseball scores when he is stopped abruptly by Ben Crawford, pointing a finger at Dave’s chest.
“I’d like a word with you,” Ben says. Dave groans inwardly, knowing he will be trapped in a long, awkward, one-sided conversation, non-productive, inconclusive. Ben is the unofficial office theologian, a proselytizer, a saver of souls. A stocky, baby-faced, but prematurely-balding man in his mid-thirties, Ben seems to see in Dave materials to be crafted and converted. His blue eyes sparkle, as if divining an inner light.
Dave is a former Catholic schoolboy who remains technically committed to the faith, though he attends Mass only rarely now. He supports the new Pope, but not the pedantic, preachy side of the official Church. The Christian Brothers in his high school had instilled in him a staunchly Vatican II mindset, a hardy ecumenicalism, acceptance of religious views of all kinds.
Ben lays his hands on Dave’s two shoulders, like a Bishop blessing a confirmation candidate. Ben is a former Catholic schoolboy, too, but has moved on to embrace an Evangelical religion as a solution to the riddle of life. He keeps trying to bring Dave along on his spiritual journey. Dave is sympathetic to Ben’s appeals, but cannot imagine switching over to his side.
Ben falls in beside Dave returning to his cube. Walking along, they discuss Kant and Kierkegaard and Martin Luther, their influences on historical and contemporary thought. As they approach Dave’s cube, he searches for a way to disengage from the conversation. He doesn’t want to get stuck in his cube talking.
“Hey, I’ve got a report due, Man,” Dave says. “I’ll get with you later.”
“You been thinking about what I asked you?” Ben says.
“I have,” Dave says. “Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Dave says. “Sometime maybe.”
“How about this Sunday?” Ben says. “We’ve got this terrific guest speaker. Nationally renowned.”
“This Sunday?” Dave says. “I don’t think I can.” (Sorry, Ben, it won’t be any Sunday.)
As they reach Ben’s cube, Dave stops and turns toward Ben.
“I better run,” Dave says. “We’ll talk more later.”
“OK, Man,” Ben says. “Have a blessed day.”
“I will,” Dave says. “You, too.”
He feels moved somehow, saying this. He likes being told to have a blessed day. He feels blessed hearing that. He has the same reaction when somebody calls him “Hon.” Call him Hon! He could be Hon!
There is no report due. Dave wants only to get away, back to the seclusion of his cube and his own private thoughts. He turns to his computer to check emails. He stares disconsolately at the screen—the meeting invite from Jerrod Walker sits there on his Outlook calendar like a vulture flying low over the Serengeti.
THE FIGHT
One of the MAGA supporters enters the breakroom now—Larry Freeman. Yes, that’s his name. It is as if he has named himself. He considers himself a free man, it seems, unfettered by rules, unbound by the strictures of laws and traditions. He has relocated here from their Midwestern office, a medium-height, barrel-chested man, slope-shouldered, pot-bellied, 50 maybe, clad today in a loose-fitting pullover shirt, jeans, and loafers, bearded, walking head down as if surveying the floor. Dave prides himself on being able to work across the aisles, so to speak, with conservatives, old fuddy duddy’s, atheists, religious fanatics, cops, military men, LBGQ, but finds it impossible with this guy, with this breed of guy.
Larry holds a large coffee mug in his right hand, one of those supersized, insulated mugs that could contain almost an entire pot of coffee. He’s an analyst in the business office, a bean counter, as they say. He gives off a noxious vibe as he walked through a room, a Don’t Tread on Me emanation. Nobody wants to tread on him. Everybody just wants him to leave them alone. Dave stares steadfastly out through the glass wall as Larry passes by, trying to hold down hsi feelings of acrimony. Dave rests his own coffee cup on a table beside him and glances over at Larry, surreptitiously. Feelings of loathing and revulsion pass over him, feelings he doesn’t like having.
Larry drones on, filling his mug from the drip machine. It’s taking him forever, since his mug is so gigantic. Other people are queuing up, but he doesn’t care. The mug seems somehow representative of his entire existence—overblown, stubborn, oblivious of others. He continues his diatribe, talking to the wall. He seems really revved up today. Perhaps he has just finished listening to some outrageous Fox News commentator on the radio.
Normally, Dave would ignore him. Normally, Dave would simply return to his cube and seethe silently, savoring his righteousness and moral superiority. But today didn’t feel like a normal day. Something in the morning’s developments has put him on a hair trigger. Maybe it is the emptiness he was feeling, a feeling that all the best things in his life are in the past, his life slipping away. Maybe it is a need to reclaim some element of dignity and self-respect. He recalls the line from T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: “Dare I disturb the universe?” Yes, he must dare. In this moment of existential angst, he must act.
“Really?” he says to Larry (knowing he sounded ridiculous), standing with his filled coffee mug now, facing the room, sipping, angry eyes scanning the room. Dave feels himself getting hot, losing control. He’s talking loudly, too fast, almost slurring his words. He knows this will be a disaster. But he can’t help myself. “Trump creates chaos wherever he goes,” Dave says. “You like chaos? Trump’s your man. He colluded with the Russians to get elected the first time. Then he wasn’t man enough to accept that he lost and plotted a coup to overturn the election. Trump is one of the worst human beings that ever lived.”
Larry cradles his mug in both hands and gazes over at Dave, as if Dave were some kind of ignorant country bumpkin. Dave stands firm, bracing himself for Larry’s response. One thing he has discovered is that these guys never back down. They come ready for battle.
“You know that’s all bullshit the media is feeding you,” Larry says. “They’re lying to you. They’re manipulating you.”
“Nobody’s manipulating me,” Dave says. He sounds like a 14-year-old caught sneaking into a movie theater. But he is already starting to lose his resolve. He takes an involuntary half-step backward. Maybe he could still make a scamper for the safety of his cube.
“You people are all sheep,” Larry says. “Follow the leader.” Which Dave finds ironic, because Larry was the one following a lunatic leader.
Dave shakes his head slowly, as if to tell Larry how wrong he is, how screwed up he is, how absurd he sounds. Larry’s jibes sting Dave. He can’t help it—he is wounded, his ego bruised. He considers himself an intelligent person, a thoughtful, caring, rational person. He is not a sheep. Larry moves forward, then, big clumping steps, coffee cup out in front, like a matador with his cape. He stops close, too close, eye level with Dave. Dave has no time to react. He stands firm, though his limbs have turned to jelly. One thing to know about Dave is that he is a big chicken, from a confrontation standpoint. He doesn’t want to get hit, of course—who does!—but also takes no pleasure in arguing with somebody or disturbing their point of view. If they wanted to change their point of view, they could do it on their own. Dave is a pacifist, live and let live. Maybe he doesn’t truly want to disturb the universe. Maybe he wants to just keep on measuring out his life in coffee spoons. Maybe that is a perfectly fine way to live!
But Dave is stuck here, now, stuck with Larry standing directly in front of him. There is no escape. Larry inches in closer, leading with his bearded face. Then, without warning, he reaches out with his free hand and pokes Dave in the chest with his fingers, hard, staccato pokes. Something snaps in Dave, then, something that must have been lurking inside him for a long time. It is as if all the political turmoil of the past six or seven years has bubbled up inside him into a froth. He grabs Larry’s hand and pushed it back into him, into his own chest. This action frightens Dave, a little, that he is capable of physically striking a co-worker, but it stiffens his resolve. He has crossed a line and can’t go back. Startled, perhaps, that a wimpy liberal would defend himself, Larry falls back a step.
“Watch your hands, Mister,” Larry says.
“You watch your hands, Mister,” Dave says.
Moments later they are fighting, physically fighting, two middle-aged guys brawling and grappling and throwing punches. This is unheard of in an office environment, unprecedented. It’s a strange, surreal feeling, everything happening fast, yet in slo-mo simultaneously, like a car wreck. At some point, holding onto each other, they both fall to the floor. Larry is a strong man and Dave finds himself struggling to keep from being pinned down. He doesn’t know where this is going. There is no good conclusion. Butt then they are saved when a young man, a lanky young man with the long legs and extended torso of a former collegiate swimmer (Stanford), moves in to pull them up and apart.
“Men!” he says. “Let’s knock it off!”
They stand apart from each other, then, breathing heavily, like snorting bulls ready to charge. Dave’s shirt is torn. He is bleeding from the arm and neck. His knees hurt. His lower lip feels puffy. Nobody knows what to do next. There is no procedure for this in the HR manual. There are no next steps. The lanky young ex-swimmer guy stands between them, arms extended, like a referee.
Two walkers enter the breakroom then, laughing and jostling, to grab some water and cool off after their jaunt around the building. Their laughter stops abruptly when they saw the two men standing there.
“Dave!” one of them says. “What’s going on?”
Dave shrugs, one shoulder only. He stands up straighter.
“Hi Allie,” he says. “Hi Jen. Oh . . .I don’t know . . .
“This guy . . . “ Larry Freeman says. He gestures toward Dave.
“Hey!” the lanky young guy says, taking Larry’s arm and turning him away. “Let’s knock it off now. You guys go your separate ways.”
Dave sits back in his cube, nursing hsi coffee, trying to regroup.
“Hey!” Renée says, perkily, peeking her head around the cube wall. “Guess what?” She stops talking when she saw him, bringing her fingers to her mouth.
“What happened to you?” she says. “Your shirt is torn. You’re bleeding.”
Dave shrugs, trying to minimize the full extent of his trauma. He has always been a minimizer.
“I had an altercation with Larry Freeman in the breakroom.”
“An altercation?” she says. “You mean, you got in a fight with him? That guy? Oh my god. Are you OK? You ought to clean yourself up. You’re a mess.”
“I will,” Dave says. “I just want to sit here for a little bit.”
“You need a Band-Aid?” Renée says. “How about some wipes.”
“A Band-Aid might be good,” Dave says. “Just a Band-Aid. Yeah.”
Renée slips back behind the cube wall and returns shortly, holding two large Band-Aids in outstretched hands.
“Here you go,” she says.
“Appreciate it,” Dave says.
He settles back into his cube, then, tightening his thighs in the office toning exercise he had read about. He checks his bank account, his retirement account, his vacation balance, today’s weather and the long-range forecast. He checks his cell phone. There is a message from his daughter Brigid in San Antonio. “What’s up, Dad?” the message saays. The message was like an answer to a prayer. He starts to cry. The large round plastic clock on the wall across from Dave’s cube says 11:00 am. Where to begin . . .
THE END
At five till three, Dave rises from his desk and checks his phone for messages one last time. He has a meeting with his supervisor at 3:00. He stops by the restroom to wash his face and hands, wanting to feel clean and pure before encountering Jerrod Walton. It’s almost like ablutions in a religious ritual. At 3:00 pm sharp, Dave knocks softly on Jerrod’s closed office door. Jerrod’s door is always closed. Nobody knows what goes on in there.
“Come in,” Jerrod says, after a moment’s silence. There is always a moment of silence before Jerrod responds. Dave opens the door and steps inside, steps softly, warily, a man exploring a mysterious and perilous domain. Jerrod is seated behind his desk, hands concealed beneath. His desk, as always, is bare, but for a slim folder centered on the desk in front of him. The folder bears the company colors and logo.
“Hi, Dave,” Jerrod says.
“Hi, Jerrod,” Dave says.
Something dark and dangerous stirs inside Dave when he sees HR rep Sheila Adams seated in a guest chair to Jerrod’s right. She holds a company folder, too, in her lap, turned up with logo facing out. Dave feels a sudden twinge of panic—maybe it’s more like a tidal wave of panic—it’s like the scene in 1984 where Winston Smith discovers Mr. Charrington is a member of the Thought Police.
“Have a seat,” Jerrod says, motioning to the open chair beside his desk. For all of his formidable bearing, Jerrod has a soft voice, a defensive, almost cajoling voice. Dave lowers himself into the wing chair gingerly, like somebody with arthritic knees. He feels disrobed, somehow, discombobulated. He pats his pocket for his cell phone for security. He nods to Sheila. She nods back to him. Maybe there is still hope. Maybe they are opening a new position for him. Maybe they are offering a special assignment. He thinks quickly—if they ask him to relocate, he is going to decline. He can’t leave here now. Kids. Friends. Family.
Jerrod opens the folder on his desk. His hands are lean and supple, nails manicured neatly, cuticles large and white. Dave knows that Jerrod thinks he is sloppy, imprecise, a loose cannon firing off at sporadic intervals. He walks around with his shirt untucked, one shoe untied, coffee spilled on his shirt.
“Dave,” Jerrod says. He sounds melancholy, almost morose. “They forced my hand. I tried to save you.”
Dave nods. He shrugs. He tries to pretend that whatever is happening to him doesn’t matter. He tries to keep from crying.
“Hi, Dave,” Sheila Adams says. “I’m sorry this has to happen. We all like you here. It’s a numbers game. Orders came from up top. We had to get our division back in the black.”
“I understand,” Dave says. He understands. He understands now. He isn’t being asked to relocate. He isn’t changing positions. He is being laid off.
Sheila nods, glances away. She puts on her glasses, very carefully, it seems, watching herself, as if to make sure she can actually accomplish the feat. Looking down, she reads from the folder that is propped open now in her lap. Friendly in the past, even too familiar at times, punching Dave on the arm while they sat together in a seminar, she seems impenetrable now, unassailable. She seems to barely know him. HR people always seem to have immunity from any personal repercussions for their actions. They just wipe the blood away. They are acting on orders, following protocols. Somebody forced their hand.
“This decision does not reflect your performance at X Corporation,” Sheila reads. “Due to a recent downturn in new business activity, we are required to reduce FTE staff appropriately. You will be provided a generous severance package, based on your years of service.”
As she reads, Dave sinks into his chair, spirit shriveling to the size of a microdot. He feels somehow removed from himself, almost a near death experience, but instead of a dazzling white light, he sees his future receding before him, zooming off into the cosmos with a forecast of solitude and apocalyptic doom.
Dave’s mind wanders. He was married when he began working here, his children young, and he was filled with energy and ambition and visions of a long and thriving career. Divorced now, children grown, house deserted, he is being sent packing to a no man’s land, an unknown, cruel, barren wasteland beyond company walls—walls that will henceforth be a forbidden zone for him. He feels a sharp, cloying pang of other-ness. He glances down at the laminated plastic badge with photo ID, dangling from a lanyard around his neck. He ponders the term, lanyard. A badge of admittance, of acceptance, of acknowledgement and recognition and approval, with that magical beep that opens a portal to a universe of commerce and activity and human interaction. All of will be denied to him now. Before he leaves, he must surrender his badge to Sheila Adams. That is the term used—surrender. He is locked out now. It’s an unconditional surrender that will never allow him back inside again.
The rest of it goes swiftly, too swiftly, yet also timelessly, like being marched off to a prison cell or a firing squad. Sheila Adams walks behind him as he wheels his belongings on a cart through a glass exit door and outside into the parking lot. He waves at Anita as he passes by.
“What’s going on?” Anita says.
“I got laid off,” Dave says.
“Oh my God,” Anita says. She stands halfway up in her fortress-like cube. “Stay in touch!” she shouts out, just before he disappears through the glass entrance door.
“I will!” Dave shouts back.
Dave places the boxes in the trunk of his car and Sheila takes the cart and leaves to wheel it back inside. Dave is alone. He is alone as he would be in a dark forest at night. The spring afternoon is warm and starched with sunshine, birds are chirping, but to Dave the scene seems as pale and stark and washed-out as in the aftermath of an atomic bomb. He closes the trunk of his car, a fine, solid, utilitarian, middle-class car, a silver hatchback Nissan Rogue that he qualified for easily and proudly because of his salary and position. Now he won’t qualify for anything.
He climbs inside and starts the motor and sits staring out the window, watching cars pass by on the thoroughfare beyond the parking lot. It’s the middle of the afternoon. He doesn’t know quite where to go, what to do. He glances back to the window where Anita would be sitting, but the reflective glass blocks his view. Finally, he pulls out and drives away. Each street corner seems a crossroad, a conundrum for which there is no answer.
