It was time to face the inevitable. He clicked open his task management software. He selected the folder on the server that was home to automatically generated lists of reply letters to be sent. 53. Not bad. He started from the top and worked his way down.
These letters began by rehashing the query (not completely accurately) with sentences starting with “You told us (insert problem)” and “We explained to you (insert explanation of user-error and/or the warranty technicality that, lamentably, tied First’s corporate hands).” Thereafter, the correspondence shifted in tone. It reminded customers of how deeply interested First was in their plight and how committed First was to their satisfaction. Pronouns were always in the royal “we” (as though the author represented a great and magnanimous body) and featured as much passive voice as possible (since, as Mr. LaRoi explained, “these things happen”). Nearly all follow-ups ended with the placating, “We thank you for contacting us. We, like you, believe that products and services ought to be perfect because it’s what you deserve. That’s why we are the People people™.”
So far as Josh could tell, these letters were intended to affect one or more of the following: (1) confuse customers whose memories were intact into thinking they had misunderstood the content of their recent customer service interactions in the hopes they would take no further action and, thereby, waste less First time, (2) console customers who were forgetful into thinking everything was okay because a company exists who knew them and wanted to help wherever possible, even though the company was unable to help at this (outlying) time, and/or (3) provide a mindboggling and ass-covering paper-trail in the event of class-action lawsuits.
Whatever the purpose of the letters, Josh could relish the act of transcribing them. He often watched his peers typing and prided himself on his relative grace. Others’ hands looked like spastic spiders jumping on a hot surface. His fingers moved nimbly over the keyboard, fast and elegant like the wings of a hummingbird. After years of training, they were precise. He could trust his hands. Even in imprecision, he displayed a mystical union with the keyboard. He intuited and corrected the few faulty swipes without cognizing the letters involved. He curled and stretched, punched and lifted, tilted and raised like an impresario. Whereas a pianist moved along one row, he moved along five (not counting the function keys, whose size, like an underutilized appendage, suggested atrophy). Reminiscent of an apothecary, he knew exotic combinations to yield unusual, yet not unhelpful, results. His repertoire went far beyond the comparatively sophomoric CTRL+ Z or CRTL+V. Josh subconsciously engaged in showboattery whenever a co-worker would look in on him (usually to avoid working him-or-herself) as he was working. He would continue typing unabated and, taking his eyes off the screen, casually perform the ALT+SHIFT+BACKSPACE or, when completed, the ALT+SHIFT+K. He had no sign his coworkers understood these magic tricks, or even noticed them, but he enjoyed it all the same.
Typing was one of his few cerebral releases. He could not ponder anything else when in the throes of this fever of productivity. He could not introspect. He could not think about what all of this meant, where he was going, or why he had consigned himself to this position. If he did, his digital accuracy would suffer. This profound thoughtlessness and channeling of the environment (from the eyes to the hands) reminded Josh of hurdling down the side of a Michigan sand dune in his childhood. The angle of inclination could not have been less than 75°, yet he ran rather than tumbled to the bottom. He did not know how he was staying upright. He did not command his legs to pump. He thought nothing of it. They hyperactively bent and straightened in step with the pitch of the dune’s face. At eight, he did not have the words to convey the feeling, but he was consumed by it. Thoughtlessness had a pleasure all its own. The undisturbed state of being—even being an unreflective action—seemed to Josh seventeen years later an alluring-yet-frightening Eastern sort of pleasure. Nirvana.
Clicking, however, could be neither meditative nor artful. There was no order or pattern to it. It involved larger fields of movement within which irregular paths were made. The up, down, and around, the jagged swipes next to the long arcs felt sloppy and all-too-human. It was less like communing with another and more like ineptly manipulating something formless and foreign. Traced out, the trails would be indistinguishable from a toddler’s scribbles. The picture was something to be displayed because of the endearing ineptness it contained rather than aesthetic attraction. Then, there was the issue of the sticky left button on Josh's mouse [a source of bottomless frustration and instigator of six (rejected) PO Request Forms]. More than most people, he disdained clumsiness. This had a chilling effect on his use of the mouse and enticed him to lean heavily on that field-jumping miracle key, TAB.
He typed much and clicked little. Work moved through him. He hummed along at 85 WPM. The cursor hurdled across the screen, jumped back, and tried again a little lower. The clock spun.
As with all repetitive motions, even the most pleasurable become painful over time. When his eyes began to water from a lack of blinking and he could take no more, he squeezed his lids shut and forced the remaining liquid out. He rubbed his cheeks dry. He flexed his wrists and threw his tartan-lined arms out and softly groaned. He bent his ankles beneath his chair so that his toes pushed down inside his shoes. He waggled his heals. He stared at the blue LED light symbolizing power on the frame of the monitor, which gave the outside world the appearance of dogged concentration. Josh imagined himself in the classically out-of-body sort of way. His vantage point was over his shoulder near the drop-ceiling, like that provided by a security camera. This was his day: overwhelmingly silent—nearly complete silence were it not for the plastic clacking—and overwhelmingly inanimate—nearly complete inanimation were it not for the movement that made the plastic clack and the consequences of his prolific caffeine consumption. Josh thought of how, in heist movies, crafty criminals would hack into monitoring software and replace the live feed with a freeze-frame. The video-made-photograph confirmed the status quo to the guards whenever the checked. Change, the difference between live and frozen, was impossible, but the guards had no idea. Josh’s day looked like this. No one could tell the difference between the photograph and the video for hours at a time. This was his life. He felt uncomfortable and left his desk in a rush.
To use the restroom, employees traversed a lengthy corridor flanked by various salaried workers deserving of offices composed of drywall, steel, and wood (rather than felt, aluminum, and cardboard). The doors of these titular nobles were invariably shut and eerily quiet. Still, one felt the urge to walk past them quickly and hold one’s breath in the hopes of passing unnoticed. Josh made the first of many passes, pushed to the left of the hand plate (to avoid germs), and entered the confines of the men’s room. An artificial bouquet clogged the space. Oranges. It always smells like rotten oranges. A faulty ballast hummed. The facilities were chromed with white accents. The tile was beige. The stalls were the color of nutmeg and made of compressed plastic. Josh was alone. He approached the nearest urinal with a thud-slap-thud-slap. He liked the sound of his soles against hard surfaces. Dramatic. He relieved himself and listened to the spatter. He dropped his lids and thought about the evening. A movie? Not again. Something…physical. A walk maybe. It would be nice to take a walk. Bundle up. It may snow. Too much snow this winter. A record? He did not flush (to avoid germs) and went to the sink. He met his reflection and was surprised at his hair’s disarray. He pushed down on it, ruffled it, and pushed down again. It was stubborn and remained puffy. I need a haircut. Soap and water were dispensed automatically. As he was lathering, Edward Kaypart sauntered in. Josh eyed him in the mirror. No greeting was exchanged. The stream was too cold to linger under. He focused on the dull feeling the temperature gave him. Enough. He patted his hands dry and listened to his footsteps again as he left. He heard Kaypart grunt as the door swished shut behind him.
Given the square-footage of the building, a person toiling in the central commons could go all day without a glimpse of the (relatively) natural world. One of the lone publicly accessible vistas was the fourteenth floor’s waiting room. Josh frequently took a circuitous route from the restroom back to his cubicle in order to confirm the existence of the outside world. The room, which was always empty, was lined with faux-wood adorned with conical sconces reminiscent of a gastropod’s home. Newspapers were feathered tastefully across the black granite top of the coffee table, unread, and replaced daily. Beyond the chairs and table, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on other structures with mirrored exteriors. The patchwork of glass rectangles across the street distorted images, melding the cityscape with ambient light. It was not stretched and skewed like a funhouse, but bulging and pocked like diseased skin. Through the gaps left by the avenues below, Josh could see the river, lazy plumes rising from the industrial district, and the horizon beyond. The sky was swaddled in a taught overcast blanket. Looks sickly. He felt as poorly returning to his desk as he did when he left it.
It was disconcerting how much of an affect the environment had on its inhabitants. Seemingly all that was required to be in good spirits was a bright sun and a temperature that made you neither sweat nor shiver. Contrarily, when the sun was impeded and the temperature oppressive in either extreme, absorbing the pallor was inevitable. Where’s the dignity of man? This line of thought agitated the sensitive humanism Josh could not be rid of, despite the stoical (if not defeatist) theme of his maturation. He liked to think of himself (and people generally) as self-possessed and rational. This meant they could always be reasoned with. What reasoning, though, was there in this realm? A person was a body within a system operated on by other bodies. For the better or for the worse, it was all inhumane. There was no challenging the emotions stirred by nature or otherwise. Language was emasculated. A person could not be talked out of a mood. How unhelpful was it to tell a person (himself included) that, “It’s not so bad.” True or false, the proposition did not matter. “Okay, so what?” the heart (whatever that is) seemed to say on its own. “It feels so bad.” People recognize the uncontrollability of circumstance. The painful consequences of it were manageable. They aren’t “up to you,” so you can cast it aside. To have something inside of you that would not submit to your own commands was frightening, unwieldy, and dangerous. How can you dissociate from that? The riddle of mental illness entered Josh’s mind, but then there was the chair, climate control, and the unwavering glow of 65W tubes over his work-station.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Solitary: 2
Josh passed the break room and ventured to his office (i.e., his 6’x8’ swath of commercial space immured by 5’ tall walls). He walked through a haze of hushed soft rock and a dirge of keystrokes. A few people were speaking sternly into their headsets. Nearly every surface was two shades off white, either towards brown or black. It was difficult to find a pronounced shadow given the effusion of fluorescent light. A large print of Edward Hopper’s Night Hawks hung beside a manager’s office, indicating a level of aesthetic sophistication foreign to the surrounding plebeians with their comic cut-outs and fading family photos.
When he approached his own nondescript heather grey cubicle, Josh was relieved to find it just as he left it the evening before. His chair was in the same position, angled away from his work station as a monument of hurried departure. His relief was understandable. At sporadic intervals, one of his three supervisors would leave a stack of papers for processing on his chair and turn it to face the computer. This practice assured two facts: (1) Josh would never overlook the stack and (2) he would be frightened to spin his chair around in the morning. This ritual, the unveiling of the worn tan-grey cushion blotched with relics of coffee spills from past employees, was the awful commencement to an awful day. To complicate matters, on some blessed mornings, Josh turned his chair and found the seat vacant. The vacancy, along with the systematically shifted desktop implements and accoutrements, signaled the cleaning crew made its bimonthly sweep of the 14th floor. (Josh suspected the sweep consisted of two tasks (1) emptying trash cans and (2) rearranging desktop items to give the area an appearance of being wiped down and dusted.) Thankfully, he could take his time this morning.
The lunch bag went, as always, to the left of his filing cabinet (which was home to archaic documents both unknown and indispensable). He sat down with a creak and turned to face the monitor. He jostled the mouse and a click sounded the return of electricity to the screen. It slowly awoke. The login screen displayed its nearly-mandatory background (the Customers F1rst logo). He typed ‘ct14’, struck Tab with his left pinky, typed ‘4867’, struck Enter with his right pinky, and was granted access to the server.
‘ct14’, his user name, was an abbreviation for ‘clerical technician 14 out of (currently) 73’. The title was inaccurate as Josh, who had been tactlessly reminded almost daily, was an assistant clerical technician. Heightening the inaccuracy, to the best of his recollection, Josh never assisted anyone. (He assumed the moniker was chosen to suggest an employee’s inability to do anything significant on his own rather than a person’s occupational charge to be helpful.) After two years of service, an employee could lose the ‘assistant’ from his title. After ten, he could gain ‘senior’. After fifteen, he could lose ‘senior’ and gain ‘supervisory’. Nevertheless, for abstruse reasons involving computer language, ‘a’ could not safely be added to ‘ct’ in the internal database. Thus, Josh and the other (currently) 40 assistants were daily able to taste a sample of their unimpressive-yet-relatively-less-offensive futures. ‘4867’, his password, was the theoretical extension for his telephone (“theoretical” because his telephone has been conscripted for other, most pressing, causes).
As there was no pile of papers on his chair, he was free to tend to matters of pleasure rather than business. Josh ran his circuit around four websites. He checked his personal email (nothing), his profile (nothing), his blog (nothing), and then his preferred news outlet. He skimmed a story about the findings of a recent survey of happiness within the fifty states. Am I supposed to move as a result? Is it for bragging rights? He scanned the list rankings to find his own out of curiosity. He found it depressing Alaska (the land of day-long night) was more than twenty positions ahead of his own. Must be good for napping. The lead photograph was of a woman jumping for joy on a beach wearing Capri pants and pink toe-thong sandals. Josh could not relate.
Josh disengaged from his workstation and headed for the coffee pot. The break room trapped the pernicious smell of popcorn at all hours of the day. The hyperbuttery scent did not combine favorably with brewing coffee. Angela “Angie” Sondervan, a human resources specialist, was rummaging through the office refrigerator. To avoid detection, Josh was careful to quietly slide his mug from out of the cabinet. He placed it gently on the counter, removed the pot, and began to pour. Josh noted the green and yellow striped socks tucked beneath Angie’s black Mary-Janes. Ever the quirky one. The burner sizzled as a drop escaped from the grounds above. Angie retracted from her position. Her blonde curls were frizzy.
“Thought I put some yogurt in there. Did you see my yogurt?” She shut the door. “It was strawberry. You didn’t eat it did, you?” She pointed an accusatory finger at Josh for a moment, put her hand down, and smiled.
“No on both accounts.”
“Oh well. Guess I’ll go the vending machine.”
Josh grinned sheepishly. Angie spun around and left. He returned to his desk, mug in hand.
Customers F1rst, LLC, was the rock on which Josh’s philosophy-and-english-major ship ran aground. First (as it was referred to by its employees who opted for brevity’s sake to leave out reference to customers altogether) was a subsidiary company that managed the customer service issues of third-party companies that lacked the time, interest, or resources (or any combination therein) to address customer service issues on its own. First’s primary objective, from Josh’s perspective, was to inundate customers with text in order to wriggle out of ostensibly clear-cut responsibilities to make right something a third-party company’s product or service did wrong or poorly. The more confused a person is, the less able they are to pursue a goal.
Josh’s responsibilities consisted of various tasks that were as underwhelmingly unimportant as they were overwhelmingly necessary. (“The shit must be shoveled,” Gary LaRoi, managing administrator and resident Straight Shooter, had once presciently explained.) Specifically, he dealt in redundancies. Primarily, he was an extra set of hands to send correspondence to customers attempting to repeat what had already been said to them during a recent conversation with a First customer service representative. Additionally, he was a superfluous set of eyes to run over text already reviewed by two other people. Last on his list of job duties was the horrendously general, yet legally binding, “complete various tasks as needed.” To date, various tasks included: redacting documents, moving boxes, rearranging furniture, and dissembling (never assembling) neutral holiday décor.
Josh imbibed half of his coffee. I need a bigger mug. The familiar burnt taste reminded him of where he was. He placed it on the desk and dipped his toe into work-waters. The cursor traced across the screen to the intraoffice email software. After two more clicks, the inbox read “1.” Josh opened the email and read one of Calloway’s painstakingly devised disciplinary form letters.
From: ma1@cf.local
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 8:05 AM
To: ct14@cf.local
CC: hr2@cf.local
Subject: Tardiness Warning
Mr. STEVENSON:
I am writing to inform you that this morning you were tardy for the THIRD time this calendar year.
Pursuant to Chapter 2, part 3, subpart C, item ii (i.e., Attendance Expectations and Procedures of Punishment) of your Employee Handbook, you have hereby been formally warned.
Please beware additional tardiness will warrant further steps to be taken, steps which ultimately result in termination. Please consult Chapter 2, part 3, subpart C, items iii-vii for information regarding these steps.
Bernard Calloway, Supervisory Technician
Customers F1rst, LLC
“The People people.”™
The year’s almost over. No steps will be taken. Josh closed the letter. He eyed his keyboard. He ran his fingers along the crease at the bottom of his mouse pad above the wrist rest. The neoprene felt cool. He pinched his nostrils together then sniffled. He flexed his upper lip. He closed his eyes and rolled his head around on his neck. He enjoyed the fluidity of the motion. He put outstretched his arms, feeling cuffs of his shirt tug at his wrists. He tapped his foot. Another day.
When he approached his own nondescript heather grey cubicle, Josh was relieved to find it just as he left it the evening before. His chair was in the same position, angled away from his work station as a monument of hurried departure. His relief was understandable. At sporadic intervals, one of his three supervisors would leave a stack of papers for processing on his chair and turn it to face the computer. This practice assured two facts: (1) Josh would never overlook the stack and (2) he would be frightened to spin his chair around in the morning. This ritual, the unveiling of the worn tan-grey cushion blotched with relics of coffee spills from past employees, was the awful commencement to an awful day. To complicate matters, on some blessed mornings, Josh turned his chair and found the seat vacant. The vacancy, along with the systematically shifted desktop implements and accoutrements, signaled the cleaning crew made its bimonthly sweep of the 14th floor. (Josh suspected the sweep consisted of two tasks (1) emptying trash cans and (2) rearranging desktop items to give the area an appearance of being wiped down and dusted.) Thankfully, he could take his time this morning.
The lunch bag went, as always, to the left of his filing cabinet (which was home to archaic documents both unknown and indispensable). He sat down with a creak and turned to face the monitor. He jostled the mouse and a click sounded the return of electricity to the screen. It slowly awoke. The login screen displayed its nearly-mandatory background (the Customers F1rst logo). He typed ‘ct14’, struck Tab with his left pinky, typed ‘4867’, struck Enter with his right pinky, and was granted access to the server.
‘ct14’, his user name, was an abbreviation for ‘clerical technician 14 out of (currently) 73’. The title was inaccurate as Josh, who had been tactlessly reminded almost daily, was an assistant clerical technician. Heightening the inaccuracy, to the best of his recollection, Josh never assisted anyone. (He assumed the moniker was chosen to suggest an employee’s inability to do anything significant on his own rather than a person’s occupational charge to be helpful.) After two years of service, an employee could lose the ‘assistant’ from his title. After ten, he could gain ‘senior’. After fifteen, he could lose ‘senior’ and gain ‘supervisory’. Nevertheless, for abstruse reasons involving computer language, ‘a’ could not safely be added to ‘ct’ in the internal database. Thus, Josh and the other (currently) 40 assistants were daily able to taste a sample of their unimpressive-yet-relatively-less-offensive futures. ‘4867’, his password, was the theoretical extension for his telephone (“theoretical” because his telephone has been conscripted for other, most pressing, causes).
As there was no pile of papers on his chair, he was free to tend to matters of pleasure rather than business. Josh ran his circuit around four websites. He checked his personal email (nothing), his profile (nothing), his blog (nothing), and then his preferred news outlet. He skimmed a story about the findings of a recent survey of happiness within the fifty states. Am I supposed to move as a result? Is it for bragging rights? He scanned the list rankings to find his own out of curiosity. He found it depressing Alaska (the land of day-long night) was more than twenty positions ahead of his own. Must be good for napping. The lead photograph was of a woman jumping for joy on a beach wearing Capri pants and pink toe-thong sandals. Josh could not relate.
Josh disengaged from his workstation and headed for the coffee pot. The break room trapped the pernicious smell of popcorn at all hours of the day. The hyperbuttery scent did not combine favorably with brewing coffee. Angela “Angie” Sondervan, a human resources specialist, was rummaging through the office refrigerator. To avoid detection, Josh was careful to quietly slide his mug from out of the cabinet. He placed it gently on the counter, removed the pot, and began to pour. Josh noted the green and yellow striped socks tucked beneath Angie’s black Mary-Janes. Ever the quirky one. The burner sizzled as a drop escaped from the grounds above. Angie retracted from her position. Her blonde curls were frizzy.
“Thought I put some yogurt in there. Did you see my yogurt?” She shut the door. “It was strawberry. You didn’t eat it did, you?” She pointed an accusatory finger at Josh for a moment, put her hand down, and smiled.
“No on both accounts.”
“Oh well. Guess I’ll go the vending machine.”
Josh grinned sheepishly. Angie spun around and left. He returned to his desk, mug in hand.
Customers F1rst, LLC, was the rock on which Josh’s philosophy-and-english-major ship ran aground. First (as it was referred to by its employees who opted for brevity’s sake to leave out reference to customers altogether) was a subsidiary company that managed the customer service issues of third-party companies that lacked the time, interest, or resources (or any combination therein) to address customer service issues on its own. First’s primary objective, from Josh’s perspective, was to inundate customers with text in order to wriggle out of ostensibly clear-cut responsibilities to make right something a third-party company’s product or service did wrong or poorly. The more confused a person is, the less able they are to pursue a goal.
Josh’s responsibilities consisted of various tasks that were as underwhelmingly unimportant as they were overwhelmingly necessary. (“The shit must be shoveled,” Gary LaRoi, managing administrator and resident Straight Shooter, had once presciently explained.) Specifically, he dealt in redundancies. Primarily, he was an extra set of hands to send correspondence to customers attempting to repeat what had already been said to them during a recent conversation with a First customer service representative. Additionally, he was a superfluous set of eyes to run over text already reviewed by two other people. Last on his list of job duties was the horrendously general, yet legally binding, “complete various tasks as needed.” To date, various tasks included: redacting documents, moving boxes, rearranging furniture, and dissembling (never assembling) neutral holiday décor.
Josh imbibed half of his coffee. I need a bigger mug. The familiar burnt taste reminded him of where he was. He placed it on the desk and dipped his toe into work-waters. The cursor traced across the screen to the intraoffice email software. After two more clicks, the inbox read “1.” Josh opened the email and read one of Calloway’s painstakingly devised disciplinary form letters.
From: ma1@cf.local
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 8:05 AM
To: ct14@cf.local
CC: hr2@cf.local
Subject: Tardiness Warning
Mr. STEVENSON:
I am writing to inform you that this morning you were tardy for the THIRD time this calendar year.
Pursuant to Chapter 2, part 3, subpart C, item ii (i.e., Attendance Expectations and Procedures of Punishment) of your Employee Handbook, you have hereby been formally warned.
Please beware additional tardiness will warrant further steps to be taken, steps which ultimately result in termination. Please consult Chapter 2, part 3, subpart C, items iii-vii for information regarding these steps.
Bernard Calloway, Supervisory Technician
Customers F1rst, LLC
“The People people.”™
The year’s almost over. No steps will be taken. Josh closed the letter. He eyed his keyboard. He ran his fingers along the crease at the bottom of his mouse pad above the wrist rest. The neoprene felt cool. He pinched his nostrils together then sniffled. He flexed his upper lip. He closed his eyes and rolled his head around on his neck. He enjoyed the fluidity of the motion. He put outstretched his arms, feeling cuffs of his shirt tug at his wrists. He tapped his foot. Another day.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Solitary: 1
There was a fuzzy, muffled sound flashing far away. The intermittent squawking pursued Josh, despite his evasion. The grating cry menaced him. It was his alarm. He turned to confront it. He tugged at his dreary body like a puppeteer. The air was cold. His arm was chilled during its escape from the blankets. He felt for the switch, clicked it, and reeled his arm back in. The crease under his pillow radiated heat. He tried blinking. Another day began. A number of relevant thoughts appeared like soldiers reporting for duty. Lunch. I need to make lunch this morning. Proofreading day today. He dismissed the bedding. It might snow. Josh hesitantly succumbed to necessity and stood up.
His job had a way of tyrannizing his day up until washing his dinner plate and silverware. He prepared himself due to his job, drove to the city due to his job, worked for the job-required time, drove from the city due to his job, and ate to recover from the occupational expenditures of energy (which were more emotional/spiritual than physical).
To begin, Josh addressed the mess he made. He bent and pulled his sheets taught, then his blanket, then his comforter. He stacked one white damask pillow in front of the other. He ran his hand across the top of the comforter and completed the daily ritual about which his father had boasted. (“Not a day went by where I didn’t make my bed. Sick, healthy, happy, or sad.”) He thought this was a trivial accomplishment, although he felt more at ease having done it. He moved on.
Josh did not slink across the carpet as tired people are wont to do. He felt old whenever he heard himself scrape the ground. The sound of shuffling reminded him of his ever-lost and pacing grandpa. He did not want to be like his grandpa. Josh was averse to aging. He consciously lifted and lowered his feet as if he was walking mid-day to convince himself he was entirely awake and alive.
In normal circumstances, he functioned within a regimented routine. The regime and its regularity were secondary to unconscious pacing (i.e., “autopilot”) rather than intentional choosing. The precision was a brute consequence of how long it unreflectively took him to eat, dress, and tend to matters of personal hygiene. 17-18 minutes were needed to pour and eat a bowl of cereal (e.g., frosted shredded wheat). 10-11 minutes were needed to pick out and put on an outfit (e.g. oxfords, khakis, and tan derbies). One-two minutes were needed to tie his tie (one being needed for the four-in-hand and two being needed for the half-or-full Windsor, dictated by flair of the collar). Four-six minutes were needed to mouth-wash, teeth-brush, and shave. Two minutes were needed to find a jacket and, in the winter, pick out a scarf. His alarm sounded at 7:01 AM and he was out of the door by 7:35-7:40AM. A 12-14 minute commute, a two minute walk from the lot to the building, and one minute elevator ride resulted in Josh being ready to work comfortably, but not excessively, before 8:00 AM. That the periods of time were so consistent at once impressed him (because he functioned like a clock and was, therefore, superhuman) and depressed him (because he functioned like a clock and was, therefore, subhuman).
The evening routine was less exact. Since the inauguration of his adulthood, workweek evenings involved tie loosening, jacket hanging, and dinner making. After returning the kitchen to pre-meal normalcy, Josh was entirely free (up until, of course, he needed to prepare to sleep so that he would not be tired the following day at work). This post-dinner time comprised of a mixture of movie watching, internet perusing, and, with increasing frequency, reading. Randomness was most regularly manifested in his lunch preparation. Whenever Josh felt “up to it,” he would make a sandwich for the next day. Last night, thanks in large part to a draining black and white foreign film, Josh went to bed without preparing a lunch.
This morning, in a dreamy stupor of sleepiness, he made his sandwich. Josh artfully applied a glob of peanut butter to the bread as a baker spreads icing. He wagged the knife side-to-side. When finished, the smooth, gently lustrous surface gleamed as though the topping was sprayed on rather than spread. The jelly-coated slice glistened with blotches of fruit flesh. He licked the knife, missed summertime berries, and rinsed it under the kitchen faucet. Josh placed the jellied-slice on top of the peanut-buttered slice with precision and slid it into a plastic bag. He inserted it and a mealy apple into his lunch bag, abutting the water bottle in a way that would not compress the delicate, vulnerable bread.
After this delay, Josh initiated the standard morning sequence. Despite chewing faster and fussing less with his tie, he could not accelerate his breakfast consumption to sufficiently compensate for his lunch-making. He locked the deadbolt on his door at 7:44 AM.
The car was dreadfully cold. The seats containing frozen foam were firmer than normal. Josh donned his sunglasses and adjusted the driver’s side visor. As his commute began, the sun hovered slightly above the horizon like a lion hunched low on the plain. Atmospheric pollution draped over the city like wax paper and tinted the sky dreamsicle. The distant buildings looked to be made of charcoal.
Driving east along the highway on a December morning was painful. A depressed section of highway with a nearly parallel stretch of road overhead felt ominous. Due to impractical geography at the time of construction, the road bent slightly to the south and back to the north, inadvertently mitigating the due-west confrontation. Abandoned, rusting buildings flanked the drivers. By the time his hungry pupils expanded in the shadows, he was nearly out of the elongated rut. Cresting the hill, the sun impaled his vision. “Erg.” The sight was not white and calm like something heavenly but yellow and accusatory like a police officer’s flashlight. He could no more look ahead than breath underwater. Everything in him resisted. It was too bright to think. At these moments, Josh focused his vision on the three foot area of pavement in front of his hood. The sun seemed to tolerate downcast eyes of deference. This is how I’ll die, running into some stalled vehicle. How is anyone else seeing? Eventually the angles and the surrounding structures were such that Josh could see again. He flicked his turn indicator, exited, and navigated the grid of numbered streets. He backed into a parking space and strode as quickly as dignity would allow into his office building.
Josh punched his timecard at 8:03. Mr. Calloway, the official assistant manager and unofficial office Bad Cop, glared as he passed. His blond mustachioed face twitched in disapproval. There’s going to be an email.
His job had a way of tyrannizing his day up until washing his dinner plate and silverware. He prepared himself due to his job, drove to the city due to his job, worked for the job-required time, drove from the city due to his job, and ate to recover from the occupational expenditures of energy (which were more emotional/spiritual than physical).
To begin, Josh addressed the mess he made. He bent and pulled his sheets taught, then his blanket, then his comforter. He stacked one white damask pillow in front of the other. He ran his hand across the top of the comforter and completed the daily ritual about which his father had boasted. (“Not a day went by where I didn’t make my bed. Sick, healthy, happy, or sad.”) He thought this was a trivial accomplishment, although he felt more at ease having done it. He moved on.
Josh did not slink across the carpet as tired people are wont to do. He felt old whenever he heard himself scrape the ground. The sound of shuffling reminded him of his ever-lost and pacing grandpa. He did not want to be like his grandpa. Josh was averse to aging. He consciously lifted and lowered his feet as if he was walking mid-day to convince himself he was entirely awake and alive.
In normal circumstances, he functioned within a regimented routine. The regime and its regularity were secondary to unconscious pacing (i.e., “autopilot”) rather than intentional choosing. The precision was a brute consequence of how long it unreflectively took him to eat, dress, and tend to matters of personal hygiene. 17-18 minutes were needed to pour and eat a bowl of cereal (e.g., frosted shredded wheat). 10-11 minutes were needed to pick out and put on an outfit (e.g. oxfords, khakis, and tan derbies). One-two minutes were needed to tie his tie (one being needed for the four-in-hand and two being needed for the half-or-full Windsor, dictated by flair of the collar). Four-six minutes were needed to mouth-wash, teeth-brush, and shave. Two minutes were needed to find a jacket and, in the winter, pick out a scarf. His alarm sounded at 7:01 AM and he was out of the door by 7:35-7:40AM. A 12-14 minute commute, a two minute walk from the lot to the building, and one minute elevator ride resulted in Josh being ready to work comfortably, but not excessively, before 8:00 AM. That the periods of time were so consistent at once impressed him (because he functioned like a clock and was, therefore, superhuman) and depressed him (because he functioned like a clock and was, therefore, subhuman).
The evening routine was less exact. Since the inauguration of his adulthood, workweek evenings involved tie loosening, jacket hanging, and dinner making. After returning the kitchen to pre-meal normalcy, Josh was entirely free (up until, of course, he needed to prepare to sleep so that he would not be tired the following day at work). This post-dinner time comprised of a mixture of movie watching, internet perusing, and, with increasing frequency, reading. Randomness was most regularly manifested in his lunch preparation. Whenever Josh felt “up to it,” he would make a sandwich for the next day. Last night, thanks in large part to a draining black and white foreign film, Josh went to bed without preparing a lunch.
This morning, in a dreamy stupor of sleepiness, he made his sandwich. Josh artfully applied a glob of peanut butter to the bread as a baker spreads icing. He wagged the knife side-to-side. When finished, the smooth, gently lustrous surface gleamed as though the topping was sprayed on rather than spread. The jelly-coated slice glistened with blotches of fruit flesh. He licked the knife, missed summertime berries, and rinsed it under the kitchen faucet. Josh placed the jellied-slice on top of the peanut-buttered slice with precision and slid it into a plastic bag. He inserted it and a mealy apple into his lunch bag, abutting the water bottle in a way that would not compress the delicate, vulnerable bread.
After this delay, Josh initiated the standard morning sequence. Despite chewing faster and fussing less with his tie, he could not accelerate his breakfast consumption to sufficiently compensate for his lunch-making. He locked the deadbolt on his door at 7:44 AM.
The car was dreadfully cold. The seats containing frozen foam were firmer than normal. Josh donned his sunglasses and adjusted the driver’s side visor. As his commute began, the sun hovered slightly above the horizon like a lion hunched low on the plain. Atmospheric pollution draped over the city like wax paper and tinted the sky dreamsicle. The distant buildings looked to be made of charcoal.
Driving east along the highway on a December morning was painful. A depressed section of highway with a nearly parallel stretch of road overhead felt ominous. Due to impractical geography at the time of construction, the road bent slightly to the south and back to the north, inadvertently mitigating the due-west confrontation. Abandoned, rusting buildings flanked the drivers. By the time his hungry pupils expanded in the shadows, he was nearly out of the elongated rut. Cresting the hill, the sun impaled his vision. “Erg.” The sight was not white and calm like something heavenly but yellow and accusatory like a police officer’s flashlight. He could no more look ahead than breath underwater. Everything in him resisted. It was too bright to think. At these moments, Josh focused his vision on the three foot area of pavement in front of his hood. The sun seemed to tolerate downcast eyes of deference. This is how I’ll die, running into some stalled vehicle. How is anyone else seeing? Eventually the angles and the surrounding structures were such that Josh could see again. He flicked his turn indicator, exited, and navigated the grid of numbered streets. He backed into a parking space and strode as quickly as dignity would allow into his office building.
Josh punched his timecard at 8:03. Mr. Calloway, the official assistant manager and unofficial office Bad Cop, glared as he passed. His blond mustachioed face twitched in disapproval. There’s going to be an email.
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