The office on the right- Work in Progress

Chapter 1: The Right Shipment, Wrong Port

She tried not to look behind her. In her head, the lights were being turned off as she walked by, signaling the end of an era. The end of a past and future at once.

How could she have known that such a day would come.

Twenty five years of loyalty, and the last three of them turning into a real nightmare. The long exhausting working hours. The dry tonality. The “can you come to my office” hand gesture and face nod.

If only her mother was still alive. It would have made things so much easier for her to chew on and digest.

But she was feeling so alone in all of this. Trapped between a humming printer and a flickering screen. No human resources to refer to. Not even a superior who cared enough. She was really surprised at what extreme loneliness can do to a person. How it made her think and act. What images it can project inside her head and what words it can whisper deep inside her ears.

“You are just another number”

He didn’t say it directly. But he surely meant it.

He said it with cold eyes, fixated on her like two new light bulbs, blinding her with a news she never expected.

No that wasn’t down-sizing at all. That was cutting her down, without any remorse.

Twenty five years. She kept telling herself. This should count for something. Hasn’t she proven already that she was in control of everything? That she can be productive and meticulous? Obedient and fair? Patient also..especially patient.

She tried to convince herself, over and over again that she was truly irreplaceable. On her way out, inside her car, seconds before hitting the gas pedal, she would take a deep breath, smile for around three seconds and empty her head of all these dark thoughts even though she knew they would end up revisiting at night to haunt her comfort and fuel her insomnia.

She had to be strong. These were tough times, and tough times required confident and determined people.

Comes 8:00 AM she would be already at her office. Dressed elegantly and ready to face the day. All the others would show up at least fifteen minutes later. Didn’t anyone notice that? Didn’t any ink write it down somewhere?

Ready for the flood of emails from those angry and greedy suppliers.

Ready to juggle with problems: Delayed shipping, late production, wrong items, wrong quantities and the endless inquiry about the outstanding balances…Another thing she should worry about but that she was unable to influence no matter how hard she tried and how loud she got.

These damn finance people…always blaming the economy and the negative cash flow

Always finding something smart to say. The fancy word and the authoritarian tonality “Mind your own business”. They surely mean it, even though they kept the words inside their throat.

Noon time. Lunch. Finally.  A light meal, or a heavy one. Depending on her temper and the intensity of  her stomach cramps.

Normally, she would interact with her coworkers. But today was not like any other day and they probably understood that as well since nobody was saying a single word. Only the sound of the forks on the plates, and the food being chewed and swallowed. She had never paid attention before about how loud the human body could be, and how watery it could get as she suddenly felt the tears starting to tingle her right eye.

“Not now, she shouted inside her head, not in front of them..”

In 5 days, her life would change forever and the road to work will cease to exist.

5:00 PM. Her superior stood up and left.

5:03. Why was she still here ? as if her legs were refusing to obey the instructions of her brain. “Stand Up you fools, do something..”

Her cellphone then rang. It was her husband. Another late evening at work probably. She didn’t answer, promised herself she would call later on. Or maybe not. Maybe it was better to let him call again.

She finally found the strength to get up, grabbed her bag and left. The office on the right was still occupied, as always.

On her way to the parking, she wept for a couple of minutes. The nightmare she was always dreading had now taken over her life. It was real. Real and absurd.

She slapped herself and wept some more.

Why her?

How can she find work now ? Twenty five years later ? No one would want her. They surely preferred younger employees, cheaper, easier to manipulate and handle.

After the first round of layoffs, she thought she was safe. But then the sales of the company kept falling down, pulled by the gravity of a badly managed economy and political corruption that has become a known and public fact, with everyone adapting to and even accepting it.

Cutting costs, and cutting lives in the process.

That was the only way out, he said, while avoiding any direct eye contact. Our lawyer will make sure you get a very good severance package.

But it was never about money.

For a split of a second, she thought about putting the whole place on fire. Every desk, every single chair, everything being turned on to ashes. Crazy times those were..with crazy thoughts taking over.

Her husband on her cell. Again.

“Why weren’t you picking up?”

“I was finishing something ..at work. I was just about to call you”

“you sound upset, everything alright?”

“Yes don’t worry, she lied, what time are you coming back?”

“Not sure yet. Will message you”

Will she be able to convey the news to him tonite ? or tomorrow ? maybe never. Acting as if she was going to work but going to a park instead. Sitting on a bench and staring at pigeons. What an end…

Five days later, she would empty her desk and throw out everything. Even the important papers, and all her business cards, except for one. One that she would keep at the deep end of the first drawer. Just as a proof that at some point in time, she was truly here. Her and no one else. Body and Mind. Flesh and Bones. Name and family name. Function. Phone number and address. Real data. Old data, but data anyway.

During her employment, she saw five human resources managers come and go, six quality managers, seven business development directors, four maintenance administrators and two chief financial officers. That was definitely a lot.

She had fought with colleagues two thousand and four hundred times.

Had lunch inside the office three thousand and six hundred times.

Entered the office on the right fourteen thousand and four hundred times, and came out with a smile only five percent of the time.

All these numbers and digits, wiped out entirely during an extremely brief and cold session. Twenty words and a minute of silence. His mobile phone ringing twice. Her heart skipping three beats and her head shutting down as she closed the door one last time.

That was two years ago. Since then, she has been staying home as the thought of another job left her sick and nauseous for days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2: The door under the Exit sign

She stormed out of the CEO’s office and headed back to hers. This wasn’t the first time it happened, and it would definitely not be the last.

Had she made the right choice of rejecting this job interview a week ago? She wasn’t so sure anymore. Not after the daily arguments.

“My mother is sick”

This was the sentence she kept playing in her head.

“My mother is sick, and I couldn’t care less about everything else”.

Lung cancer. Two cigarette packs a day. A self-inflicted death? A natural consequence?

She didn’t expect anyone to understand her pain. Her pain and anger.

She needed to get out of here. Yesterday she laid off someone else. And he cried, wept like a three years old baby. Told her he had family. Two kids and school expenses. That the company should have taken this into consideration. “I can even accept half a salary” he said. But the decision was not hers. The verdict had already been issued. Cut down the payroll. Severe and strict instruction that she couldn’t bypass.

Those damn finance people. Converting everything into numbers.

She still had to tell three other employees and endure their reaction, the secret language of their eyes and the tensed movement of their upper lip. They would probably blame her for not fighting enough. For giving up early and easily. For not raising her voice, screaming her lungs out. Rejecting the decision and proposing some other alternative. But she already knew there were none. The boss had spoken and she had to execute.

Was she getting paid to agree on everything ? To nod and smile. Act like a hypocrite and then slamming every decision once the backs and ears are turned ? This wasn’t her. This couldn’t be her. She hated what she had become over the years. Some other version of herself that she couldn’t repress anymore. A stranger that she carried around during eight hours a day and that she would temporarily bury as soon as she got off work.

This couldn’t be her. Not anymore.

Even her doctor seemed to agree “Seems your body is unable to handle all the stress you are imposing on it”. Few months ago, her appetite vanished and she started getting dizzy turns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3: To finance a black hole

The phone rang for the twentieth time.

And like the nineteen times before it, he let it ring some more waiting for the sound to give up its last breath and die.

Papers everywhere. A mountain of invoices and a pile of some unknown documents that were too precious to throw, but too secondary for him to take care of right away.

Another phone call. This time it was his boss. One of the phone calls he couldn’t ignore, even though he knew he would regret it later, or right away.

“Yes, I will be right there”. He then hung up.

On his way to the conference room, he kept having mental images of a black hole. He could even hear the sound of outer space. Silence then a sudden “woosh” that would swallow everything like a giant vacuum coming from nowhere and sparing no one.

He sat down. Some bankers again.

White shirts, ties. A handshake. The sound of the A/C breaking down and the door opening to let some air in. The phone ringing again. “Hello?, No I can’t right now. In a meeting”

Another handshake. The receptionist enters “Phone call for you”

He smiles, tells her he will be calling them later but she doesn’t seem to understand.

The meeting ends without any decision being taken, and under the false impression that they might all meet again sometime in the future.

Back to the office where everything seems to be falling down. Even the currencies. Maybe this is where gravity was born.

He was still surprised at how fast things can spiral out of control, how a sequence of events that were seemingly unrelated at the time could pave the way to the complete and utter destruction of an entity that was supposed to be whole and robust.

He came here in the 2000s. Two interviews, one with the HR and the other with the financial manager. A nice guy. Bit old. Bit grey and depressed. But still nice overall.

What is your favourite book ? something written by Kundera..

How can you define integrity? Uhh…

How much do you expect to earn ?...enough to lead a decent life..something about inflation and the cost of living. When you are a fresh graduate, never talk or hint about a number. Just smile and look confident. The numbers will follow. And they did…not all of them of course..and not as many digits as he would have thought. Wrong job? Wrong country? Location Location Location. He should have gone to the Gulf. The home of the digits. The place where careers are born. “And then, you can apply to Europe, UK, US…”

And finally, the very famous “Where do you see yourself in five years ?”..funny question, in a country where each day doesn’t seem to be standing on its own. Like a single domino constantly terrified of its neighbors.

So he joined them.

Unaware of course that he would be spending the next decade watching people come and go. Systems rise and fall. To the ground.

“Create something out of nothing. Show us what you can do”. That was the instruction. He couldn’t remember who said it and whether it was sent by mail or courier. But it was recorded and stored, in some part of his brain. One of those sentences that are left blurry on purpose just to keep the doors open. Open for interpretation.

All the university courses that he took didn’t seem to make sense anymore. Or to say the least, they weren’t of particular help in this situation. Wasn’t he too young to deal with nothingness?

Cubicles. Three people. Is this the right entrance? He stepped in. Hesitant but trying to look and sound confident.

“I am the new guy”

One of them smiled back.

“This is the sales department, you should go straight and then take your first left”

And so he did.

Maybe he shouldn’t have. But there were no warning signs anywhere. No flickering light and not even an ode and somehow frightening industrial sound in the distance. Only the monotonous and calculated steps of a printer and the gossips of a fax machine that used to be white, but ended up on the yellow side of the color spectrum. Because this is exactly what time does. Not only to objects but to people as well.

Stay away from my clients. Let us keep things between us. How old are you?

Those were some of the questions, partly written and partly spoken upfront or backstage.

He turned off the light and when he turned them back on, it was twelve years later.

He had read somewhere that “time was a currency”. The first and only real currency. Simple and scarce. Simpler than bitcoin that was for sure. That expression made him think of the prison system as well. Paying for your crime, with your time taken away and restricted to a specific and limited set of activities, the primal ones mostly such as eating, sleeping and talking with yourself. Since everything is eventually time related, materiality is bound to take over in every corner of the globe. That was probably the reason he had opted for a financial degree. Or maybe due to the complete and surprising absence of guidance after school or a herd led thinking mechanism..Follow the crowd and you will eventually get somewhere. Or not.

Why can’t we go back to bartering instead? It would most definitely remove most of the stress inherent in every modern financial transaction which allows you to buy and sell what you do not even own.

“What do you think will happen to the Euro”, they asked him.

“Well it depends..”

“On what?”

“On the US and Europe. On world Peace. On the black oil. On interest rates maybe” Does anyone really know ?..or was it just an attempt to look and sound smart by saying big words stolen from a mediocre article on the net.

They were still waiting for his answer. Sitting altogether on this large rectangular wooden table.

“Probably Up…”

They all nodded then looked at each other: “So we should change our prices”.

Prices..if only that was the problem.

So he started in a cubicle. Similar to a silo. “We should handle everything internally, as a team”. That was the philosophy at the time. Never send your problems to the headquarters (It felt like Big Brother was living there, terrorizing every single being around his sphere of influence). And he tagged along..only for a short while. Culture was not his main focal point back then. He just needed the experience, like every fresh graduate in the market. Your first job never mattered, and maybe not even your second.

He didn’t really like going back in time. But some moments just imposed themselves on him and he would suddenly find himself, mostly at night before his body would shut down, drawn back to them like a half conscious fly is blindly attracted to a gradually dying light. Playing back all the events in his head in the right order had never worked for him. Does it actually even work with anyone? Way too much order might not be human. It’s just something he had to accept. Adapting to chaos. In an organization that looked great only on the outside. In a country that was rotten both inside and out.

The year 2007. or was it 2006?

“Your reservation number is 666”. He smiled. She laughed as well. But he never went to see the movie.

The supermarkets were suddenly full. The shelves emptied so fast it made his head spin. Panic mode. Escalation and deterioration. The smell of war. The face of war. On every forehead. Sitting on every wrinkle.

“Work will continue as planned. No need to feel threatened. The capital is safe”.

That was yet another instruction they had received, using mind waves this time just for creativity sake, and mainly because the boss was eager to try it out, for cost cutting purposes.

The airport was bombed. Fire everywhere. He barely slept that night, felt as if he was drowning in a sea of gasoline.

“Hello? is this the financial department?”

“Yes, how can I help you?”

“You have an unpaid promissory note. You please have to settle it by