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.