Читать книгу Cubicle Envy - Geoff Jarok - Страница 3

-Let’s do some onboarding and get you in the loop-

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

“I was in the copy room getting a printout and this guy walks in. I remembered I had seen his picture in the financial statements so I knew he was big time. It was William Ormsby-Gore, you know the VP of sales. He had some lackey with him. For the sake of the story we’ll call him Toady McKissass. Like I’m an illegal immigrant he pretends that I’m not there and he says to Toady, ‘It’s been a long time since I used one of these things,’ referring to the copy machine. Then I said ‘The first thing I like to do is loosen my tie a bit so the blood can flow properly to my finger to press the button, plus it makes people think I’m human.’ I didn’t say that. In fact, I just grabbed my stuff and left and then I did a voodoo prayer for a paper jam which surprisingly was ineffective.” Chris had a rare turn as the lunchroom emcee.

“Who is this guy?” Dennis met J Lo once and he now knew more about her via internet searches than he did about the upper management of his employer.

“Dennis, dude you’re in marketing and you don’t even know who the VP of Sales is?” Chris’ role as an accountant provided that he meet a daily quota of questioning. Lunch hour was as good a time as any. His cohort, Lisa, liked to ask more pointed questions.

“Remember how steamed we were in February after the last ‘Town Meeting’ when they mentioned that we missed the earnings mark by two million bucks because we couldn’t get the final deal done with Lever? Meaning the deal didn’t get cleared because Accounting thought the revenue recognition was too aggressive,” explained Lisa. “Yeah, well that was freakin’ Ogre opening his big mouth on that one too.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dennis recalled, his Lead Nobody title from marketing shining brightly.

“That’s the British guy that Kelly likes?” Dennis prodded

“Na-uh. Well, I mean he does look like Pierce Brosnan a little bit,” Kelly offered like she was at a teenage sleepover.

“Yeah, but with a faker accent. I bet he’s from New Jersey. Like that Rockefeller guy. He’s got a German accent, but he says he’s a Rockefeller. OK, please don’t cut me up Jeffrey Dahmer Rockefeller!” A howl rattled through the kitchen at Lisa’s analogy.

The door opened slowly. It was Philip.

“Speaking of creepy,” Kelly muttered softly. Empty paper bags and plastic-ware were strewn all over the table.

“Philip, are you gonna break the microwave again?” Lisa was on a caffeine rush after drinking her Coke. Philip ignored her.

“What’s the sign on the door?” he asked. While Lisa took another swig from the bottle, Chris explained.

“Our manager got a complaint that we were too loud in the lunchroom so then HR got involved and then the sign magically appeared saying please keep the door closed to preserve the work environment.”

“I think they’re just trying to smoke us out,” exhorted Lisa as she slammed the bottle down on the table harder than she planned.

“They send in spies to cook nasty fish in the microwave and stink the place up. Philip, are you cooking fish?” Lisa’s eyes had a way of squinting slightly when she was being jocular as if she were always trying to sight the next target.

“I was going to eat it, but maybe I’ll just leave it in your cube.” He had played these games before with Lisa. There was a line of demarcation in regard to their playful bickering, but more often than not Philip did not fight back when Lisa crossed it.

Lisa gave up that fight and turned back to the table. “Anyway, I think it’s about time for another ESO.” Lisa was fond of code words and acronyms. The others figured she got off on being secretive, and they were happy to play along. In reality she just liked making shit up to seem more glorified than her title that wasn’t much more important than Dennis’.

“What’s an ESO?” Dennis asked.

“I can’t tell you,” Lisa quickly replied. Employee Sponsored Outing had lost its sexiness along the way. She couldn’t actually recall what ESO stood for anymore, but she wasn’t letting on.

“Can I come?” Dennis said hopefully.

“No, you can’t. It’s at a secret location. You can hang out with Philip. Go…I don’t know, listen to that Indian Bollywood music. What is that shit you listen to, Philip?

“Brazilian folk music?” he said quizzically, trying to connect the dots that were often scrambled in her mind.

“Oh, yeah. Brazilian, Indian, it’s all the same,” Lisa said while the others marveled in snickers at her flippancy. They knew that when she had an idea she wasn’t going to suffer any distractions.

“Look, Dennis, you can take my spot. I’m still trying to work out Lisa’s last hair-brained idea,” Chris graciously offered.

“Nice try, bud, but we own your soul,” Lisa joked.

“Sadly, that’s probably true,” admitted Chris.

Chris looked at his coworkers and realized how much he’d miss the minutiae of eating lunch at the kitchen table. It was April of 2009 and the waterline of the recession was too high to pretend nothing was happening. Since no one is an expert swimmer when they’re being pushed underwater, he figured another job could be a life preserver. He could muster sweat equity for the Devil and it wouldn’t bring him back to these cheap laughs or familiar smiles. The market of open positions barely threw scraps to the qualified much less offered ready-made companionship, but something convinced Chris he had to go.

He, like the others, was with Sound Tech Inc. before they were purchased by Product Wave Ltd. While the former office in Wakefield wasn’t much to speak about in general, a lot of time was spent in the kitchen during the glory days of the dotcom boom. Over time the company spent money to make the kitchen corporate state of the art. It would often hold twenty people for lunch without too much trouble. Sitting on a butcher block island were bowls of M&Ms or Cheeze-Its and underneath was a full-capacity dishwasher. A TV and foosball table occupied an adjoining room. And, to HR’s delight, there was a big soundproof door to keep it all in. Even after the bust the tables and chairs were never replaced, but they worked fine and gave a good view of the Italian tile molding job that was stopped halfway through once funds dried up.

Sound Tech never made any money, but the R&D was so impressive that a suitor was easy to find. In 2006 the purchase was made by Product Wave, Ltd. based in Cambridge, England. They scraped away the old management, both beloved and hated, but for the most part kept the same staff. A year ago was the beginning of the corporate simplification with the first maneuver to move corporate offices from Wakefield, Massachusetts to Waltham, Massachusetts. Physically it wasn’t a massive move. It was a question of how the soup would bind with multiple companies under the PW umbrella coming to the same site.

With the economy down Chris had to think about a lot of factors. He had been in a long relationship with Donna, beautiful Donna, who as a veterinary assistant didn’t know much about corporate life, but she wasn’t only sensitive to dogs in pain. She could see Chris was having a hard time. He proposed to her over the previous Christmas, but the timetable for the wedding seemed to inch further and further away as if the newsmen were reporting on the sinking chances of the nuptials rather than declining stock prices. It would happen someday as they were in love just at the wrong time.

Chris was already underpaid compared to his peers and now PW instituted a salary freeze for at least half the year. He was still young in his career, though, and so he wasn’t used to moving from job to job on speculation that things were better elsewhere. He had spent five years at Ernst and Young; probably two years too many of the sixty-hour workweeks. He said it was experience that kept him there, but in fact it was fear. Now he had come to the same spot. He was leaving PW. Chris had a couple of second interviews lined up so it was all, but done, though he’d been quiet with his co-workers.

The crisp energy of springtime in New England would have permeated to PW if the staff had windows out of which to look - management offices rimmed around the outside of the building. A heap of cubicles caught the remainder of the staff in the middle of the floor. Rows of cubes all set up the same way like a phalanx that can bring the people closer together or destroy them all with equal speed and efficiency. With the first quarter close completed, the finance team was just trying to clean up like London after the Blitz. Papers with notes scribbled in the corners in multiple sets of handwriting, binders left open to chapter and verse, boxes brimming with old reconciliations, and post-it notes artistically stuck to plastic, but already withering.

Chris was fairly organized so his cleanup had been quick; Lisa less so. They were opposites, which made them work well as an accounting team. He was more serious and reserved. While Chris had come to care for these people and listened to their daily thoughts about work and family, he preferred to keep a level of anonymity. They had met Donna at the summer outing of the previous year and it took them about a month of badgering to finally get Chris to bring her picture into work. It sat guarded in his cube by the square, plastic, pencil holder. Conversely Lisa was an open book for whom, if she had been hiding anything, it couldn’t possibly have been legal or ethical. She, like Chris, grew up in public accounting where succeeding as a woman required certain allowances for boys’ club activities. As years pass it has become more equal, but maybe she was just born a little bit brash. Lisa was about ten years older than Chris, and, given her stories of growing up in ratty Dorchester in the 1970s and 1980s he couldn’t figure out how two people with such divergent paths could both wind up in the same spot.

It’s hard to unwind after the late nights of a quarter end. People who have spent years doing taxes during the busy season have restless minds, especially during the spring. When deadlines end there is suddenly less work and the days drag. PW management didn’t allow music in the office so Chris and others had taken to using their iPods. At times one would think they were walking through the basement storage of a library with file cabinets and cubes, staring at each other silently. Every few minutes a beep would sound from someone swiping their security badge to enter the office met with the metal tap of the door closing again, but it would all just fade into the office ether. Occasionally a completely discordant noise would shake everything out of its torpor. Ears would perk up when it was obvious You-Tube was involved, proven by the raucous laughter. Soon management would be on the scene because they want to be part of the team and laugh as well, but they can’t. It’s not in their job description.

Eventually the afternoon finally ends. For some the whistle blows at exactly 5:00 when the four-note tone of Microsoft computers shutting down ripples throughout the office. Others, like accounting, who have been trained to be most efficient, hang on until they find the proper breaking point. For Chris on a nothing Wednesday that time was 5:20. He said goodbye to Lisa which, as usual, turned into an unnecessary conversation about how busy she was or about how much they were getting done. When he finally got down to the lobby and saw that it was still light out, his mind relaxed. After pushing through the revolving doors he could feel that it was colder out than it looked even with the fading sun shining. Chris sent a quick text to Donna to let her know he was on the way. He always noticed the same cars parked in Lot E each day. At least somebody else saw the value in keeping to habit.

Chris Mackey and Donna Catcher moved in together in November. She had been living in Tewksbury in an apartment by herself. Break-ins had increased a bit with the economy in a tailspin and her landlord was generally sleazy so it was an easy solution for them to come together. Plus the relationship simply demanded this next step. He enjoyed that the house actually looked somewhat fresh given that he had a partner now to help keep it clean. The paint on the outside was a faded, peeling crimson red and the cornices had chipped a bit after some tough winters, but it was a good location with a garage and room enough for two. Now there were flowers on the sills where dust used to advertise space. Both Chris and Donna were pleased with the situation and seemed to get along in this new phase of the relationship.

When he got home that evening she was sitting on the couch. Her long brown hair in its tired repose was beginning to reach for the arm of the couch. As he put his bag down she was startled a little bit, but played it cool by transforming the jump in her shoulders into a full stretch towards the ceiling with her fingers before a slow leaning flop back onto the seat of the couch.

“Man, I’m tired,” she said, muffled by the cushions.

“I hear ya,” he said because that’s what you’re supposed to say.

“Whaddya thinking for dinner?” he said while placing his jacket on the kitchen chair.

“Ice cream?” she exclaimed with glory in her eyes.

“Nah, I gotta eat something somewhat healthy. How about a salad? I’ll put cheese on it. It will be wonderful.”

As Chris looked in the refrigerator he heard her slide along the tiles to put away his jacket. It made him smirk a little bit. He reached down for the lettuce and turned it. Chris wasn’t sure a new job would freshen up his produce, but everything gets stale if it sits around long enough. Staring at the brown spots, he asked, “So, how about some ice cream?”