From Jester To King XXXVI

The world of work is not an easy one with John Lafarge on your case. John Lafarge hounding Cynthia for god knows how long and it’s me who always picks up the pieces. John Lafarge is a bully with a crew cut and his neat little glasses. Someone needs to stand up to John bloody Lafarge. He came round to her department today to take her off the team screaming and shouting for no good reason and she not surprisingly bursts into tears quivering and shaking, doesn’t know what to do, how she’ll cope, where she’ll go afterwards etc. This all delivered to me in the atrium, everything happens in the atrium, the personal chats the carousing meeting up for lunch, acknowledging each other with that ubiquitous clipped head nod. She was distraught and hysterical. I’m ashamed to say it but I had that very natural sense of relief that it wasn’t me that had been fucked with because I really do not want to be fucked with, that’s not to say I don’t genuinely feel for her. But little did I know what was to come next. Because suddenly the full-scale alarm goes off, all people to assemble according to the their number in the super lift -- we all have a number to be visible at all times -- the lift is huge and can more than comfortably fit the whole office inside, and this could mean only one thing, which is that we were all destined for the chop, and I’m a 4 but I deliberately hung back from the other 4’s at the outset, well I didn’t have a particular plan in mind at the time, I just wasn’t going to give myself up to the slaughter that easily, but then I thought I better join up but then I genuinely couldn’t find him so I go in the back side of the lift, and there’s this enormous commotion and I see a smattering of 4’s but not the main bulk of them, and then all of a sudden before me, there is Lafarge himself, his little beady head with the tiny patches of black on his newly-shaven little scalp, and he rushes right up to me with ferocity, spitting blood, tells me he knows my game, starts shoving me in the direction of the 4’s towards the front of the lift ,meanwhile the alarm is still on full berserk, but I stop, and he stops and we’re facing each other, all this energy and commotion and urgency around us, and I look straight into him and I tell him he doesn’t scare me, I’m not going anywhere, haven’t done anything, my hands are on his shoulders bringing him closer and he is livid, how dare anyone question his command, spittle flicking out of his mouth as he spits the words out in his stupid twee accent trying to shove me away from the lift back into the atrium, he wants to push me himself personally, haul me all the way down the main granite staircase, and I suppose everyone must be watching at this point, but I’m standing my ground and I’m not saying it was because of me, but the alarm suddenly goes off and I’m just standing with him on one of the steps leading down to the lobby, he given up, exhausted, me intractable, and no one has a clue what’s going to happen now, we’re all in limbo and do you know what, Lafarge just walks off, he walks off somewhere leaving us all there in the lift and the atrium and I catch up with Cyn who’s stopped crying and shaking by now and we’re just back in the atrium chatting again as if nothing’s gone on.