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Dating : Office: A short story

h2>Dating : Office: A short story

Lil Tea Cuppy

§Certificate of Staying Sane§

This certificate is presented to Miss Y in recognition of her effort to stay sane.

Like any other morning, I wake up at the same time, 7.00 am, and put my phone on snooze to have five more minutes of sleep, a sadomasochistic habit shared by many other fellow citizens. I eat my breakfast like an automaton and start to get ready for my commute. I blankly head to the metro station. When I wake up from my walking coma, I realize that I am already at the station. I see people that I saw yesterday and the day before yesterday and the day before the day before yesterday. After listening to Bjork’s Venus as a Boy eleven times I arrive. The same deranged old man preaching in front of the exit greets commuters. I wonder if he’s working for the church or working for Satan to dissuade people from going to church.

Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash

I enter the office, no one pays attention. I try to make loud noises, almost stomping my way in for a perverse desire to make them frown.

Still, no one looks up, so I decide to make a cup of tea with a cheap tea bag in the office kitchen. To buy such trash is a reification of the managing director’s tastelessness. He is a middle-aged man with an enormous balding head. His face looks like it was created by God when He was most tired and careless. He already arrived; his glass cubicle is emanating a dull florescent light. I sigh.

While I make my tea, I open the drawers to see what’s there to take. A bunch of neon-colored post-its as always. I take a few of them as a morning ritual. Then suddenly, I feel entitled to take more. Why not a few more post-its when I’m being underpaid, exploited, mortified and spiritually murdered? I put more in my pockets. Maybe on my last day, I will take something bigger, heavier and pricier. I think I deserve at least that.

I check my Hotmail inbox just in case they send me my work a bit earlier today. Still nothing. If the work starts around 9.30 am, what kind of a sick-minded person would want me to come an hour earlier? Sadly, that person is sitting right in there, protected by the glass walls from my simmering anger. It’s been several weeks since he has started pushing me to come 30 minutes earlier than the usual 9.00 am. I pretended as if I didn’t notice his annoyance and said I will try. I am not going to come early unless he lets me leave early. He may force me to drink the bitter low-grade green tea, but I am not going to let him make me stay longer in this office than what is written in my contract. I am free from him. That’s the law.

I click a few emails from yesterday on my desktop and rearrange my desk. I cross off a day on the calendar with a black sharpie. The squeaky sound it makes due to the friction of the smooth and expensive calendar paper gives me the illusion of being professional and productive.

When I cannot pretend that I am working anymore I stand up and go to the toilets. As I walk in, I confront my boss coming out of the toilet. She is no less pathetic than the director. She once bragged to me how the director complimented her for organizing the names of email recipients just the way he wants. It’s a sad life if that’s what you are being complimented on, and you are sincerely content about it. I don’t go around telling people that my mom compliments me on how good I am at cutting my toenails. Because she doesn’t, and even if she does nobody cares. I just smiled at her like how I do when I hear politically incorrect jokes from old people on the metro. She didn’t seem to notice. I am not sure whether I should be relieved or not.

We have a short emotionless exchange and then she leaves. I see that somebody coughed up mucous in the sink and did not flush it. Every single thing about this office is disgusting; this is no surprise anymore. I turn on the faucet. I watch the sick yellow mucous slowly dissolving in the hot water. Maybe I am also being dissolved. I look in the mirror only to find out I am not. The sink is clean marble white again. I don’t want to urinate anymore. I still stay in the toilet so I can avoid the director coming to my desk to preach how the youngest should be the earliest to arrive. A few minutes later someone else walks in. I am in no mood to make more small talk, so I walk away while keeping my head down.

The same thing every day. Filling out Excel sheets, doing the same paperwork. A manager who sits on my right even eats at the same place for lunch. They come to the office all dressed up like monami 0.7 ballpoint pens, type numbers on their screen, say things on the phone, eat and go home, only to repeat this. Do they sincerely think they are doing something, or is it just a meticulous role-play? I want to scream and break my desktop screen. I want to climb up the desk and cry that I don’t want to play this game anymore. But I remain seated, doing the same thing as always, like everyone else.

A sycophant sitting on my left is particularly annoying today. I find him mediocre but an excellent ass-kisser. He seems tired as if he has a hangover. He makes ugh and agh sounds. I feel obliged to socialize with him, but as soon as I look at his imbecile face, I decide to be uncivil this morning. The boss whom I met in the bathroom walks past and winks at him. He flirts back, smiling at her. He may as well have literally kissed her bottom. I don’t know who I should feel sorry for, as they are both competitively disgusting.

Someone approaches me. I pretend to work but he notices that I am just typing random alphabets on Notepad. After a moment of awkward silence, he asks me to collect some laptops from the fifth floor. I get excited that I have a legitimate reason to walk around the building. I climb upstairs. I see someone fighting on the phone. It looks intense, so I am instantaneously drawn to it. Some words like socks, hospital, and I-told-you-so bounce off the cement walls, getting amplified. I stand soundlessly and listen to the echoes of rage and frustration. The man soon notices me and mutes himself by covering his mouth. Losing interest in eavesdropping, I finally decide to do my chore.

I arrive on the fifth floor and find where the secretary is. When I ask her where they keep laptops, she hands me a key and tells me they are in the small cabinet. I open the cupboard and retrieve two ancient-looking laptops. They are so heavy. When I try to leave with the two laptops the secretary grabs me and asks me to write down who is borrowing them in her book. I don’t think anyone would want to steal these metal junks. Miss, it’s cautionary. She doesn’t seem to appreciate my sense of humor. I realize that I don’t remember the guy’s name despite working in the office for more than four months. I sign my name in the book instead. I go down and give them to him. He doesn’t even say thank you.

I look down through the window. People wearing suits will pour out onto the streets at the same exact time. Elevators crowded, restaurants without empty seats, and waitresses going insane, yelling at people who are holding up the line. These people probably have problems of their own. That one looks like she hasn’t been laid for a long time, that one looks like he was scolded this morning, and that one looks just utterly lost. Nonetheless, they dance to the same rhythm of the city, marching with no direction, no purpose. That’s what makes us so identical and so unbearable.

My boss cannot shut up even during lunch. Her frivolous laughter echoes in the office, in the elevator, in the restaurant and now in my head. She sees me eating silently. Silence provokes loudmouths like her. Miss Y should go serve in the military and learn how to behave in front of her superiors including me. I pretend not to hear her, wishing this conversation would cease before starting. But she continues. Look at him, she points at the sycophant, he went to the military service and he knows how to treat his superiors. Is she being serious? I am so befuddled that I don’t even know what to say. The sycophant proudly smiles as he is being pointed out, and I am yet again appalled by his stupidity. Who would want to make love to that moron? This poor thing will die a virgin.

Then one male employee retorts. Women should never go to the military because then nobody would want to date her! Just imagine all these women, standing in a row, and bullying the younger newbie: You shouldn’t draw eyebrows because it’s only allowed for sergeants. Yes, ma’am. Can’t you speed up removing your make-up? Sorry, ma’am. His ridiculous female impersonation makes everyone laugh. She turns red and snarls at him. He is laughing so hard at his own joke that he doesn’t notice it. Everyone is so ridiculously pathetic, it’s like watching a freak show. I too laugh, not with them but at them.

From The Trial (1962)

I get into a trance state watching endless numbers on my Excel sheet. Incessant typing noises in the background are becoming almost relaxing. Typing sounds, occasionally interrupted by my boss’s demonic laughter. Phone ringing and people picking up after it rings three times. People walking and running outside the window. Cars coming and going. Maybe it is traffic lights that are orchestrating the city, not humans.

I try to interfere with the rhythm, like a kid touching the surface of the water to make circles of currents, surprising the fish moving so randomly but also so predictably. I silently stand up, look around, and make funny faces. I stick my tongue out, I roll my eyes, I frown. I mouth the words ‘fuck you all’. Nobody looks up. I want to laugh out loud.

Then my office telephone starts ringing. It has never rung before. I stare at it for a while and once it is clear that it is not going to shut up, I finally pick it up. The secretary’s angry voice rings in my ear. Miss Y, where the hell did you put the laptop? I tell her I will come back to her after asking the guy who requested them. I walk to his place. He seems annoyed by this simple technical question. I told you I returned them before lunch. I say thank you which I do not mean at all and call the secretary again. Miss Y, you are being irresponsible. We are missing one and I will not stop until you find it.

I go upstairs to try and calm her down and to remind her that even if there is a psycho who has a perverted fetish over old electronics, or, God forbid, an insane man who has a morbid obsession with the triviality of the company’s internal business and dares to steal the laptop, I’m still not responsible because both laptops were signed and returned under someone else’s name. She is too psychotic to be persuaded. She repeats and yells her nonsense, and I slowly lose my patience. She blames me but I never say sorry because I am not, which, interestingly, seems to fuel her rage. I finally tell her I will go down to search again and call her back, just to make her stop yelling. I go to the toilets and sit down to urinate. I am so tired of everything. I accidentally press the bidet button on the toilet seat. Before I can do anything, the toilet starts shooting water at me. It feels like it’s urinating back at me. I laugh like a crazy woman sitting on the toilet with my pants down.

There is no laptop. I start to wonder if it was a figment of my imagination. The secretary calls me back again. This time she is screaming through the phone, that I am irresponsible and clearly do not understand the gravity of the issue. Her nagging exhausts me, and I play Microsoft Minesweeper while she expresses her frustration which is totally unrelated to me. Could you at least tell me what I can do for now, at the moment? It’s already 5.30 pm and, as you know, I need to leave soon. I hear her breathing deeply trying not to explode. I cannot tell you how to find a missing object, Miss Y. I cannot believe this! I feel like I am trapped in Kafka’s short story. But I don’t stay longer to look for the missing laptop. That’s not on my contract. I pack my stuff to start my commute back home. People sitting next to me watch me in shock as I walk out of the door at 6 o’clock sharp.

I cannot think of anything else. My commute back home is filled with endless thoughts. It’s certainly not so boring anymore. First comes anger. How can that old bitch be so stupid? It’s clearly not my fault. Then comes frustration. What if they make me pay for it? That would be unfair, I am already being underpaid! Lastly, sadness comes.

I return home and crash onto my bed. The shock makes a rabbit plush tumble down a pile of stuffed animals sitting next to the pillows. I pick her up and talk to her. Can you believe this is happening to me? The rabbit is silent. I hug her and cry. Her cotton fur absorbs my salty tears.

The next morning, I enter the office and am told that the laptop was found on the fifth floor, not in the cabinet but in some meeting room. Someone from the fifth floor took it, accidentally without signing the secretary’s book. I am having a hard time suppressing my strong desire to walk to her desk, grab her hair and pound her head against the desk. You said you can’t tell me how to find a missing object, huh? I grin and sip the bitter green tea. The balding director calls me into his cubicle.

We are very sorry that this kind of mistake happened. It was clearly our fault. I will talk to the secretary in person and will ask her what went wrong with the system. Anyway, the laptop has been retrieved, it was on the fifth floor. You know, as a new recruit, these things all mount up to increase your experience and help you later on in your career. This kind of thing always happens in companies — this doesn’t mean that we are not sorry though, you know that, right? I apologize as the director of the department. Do you have anything you want to ask?

I don’t want an apology from this pathetic balding guy. I want it from her, that bitch, who made me so miserable for several hours. I look at him. I am glad it has been returned. I guess she must be very happy, she seemed quite attached to those laptops. She is, she is very relieved. He nods seriously. The way he talks, the way he nods as if he understands, the way he breathes to continue being the way he just is, everything that he is doing wrong — I cannot stand anymore. Can I go now? Yes, sure, just don’t feel offended. He is scared of me leaving negative comments online about the company. I don’t answer and step outside.

Everyone seems to be excited by my misery. They are so interested in the hypothetical laptop that the crazy secretary was searching for. So, did she find it? What happened? What did the director say? How is she? Did she say sorry to you? The manager sitting to the right of me is the most excited one, he cannot conceal it. He even loos rosy. Oh, it was on the fifth floor, right under her nose? How could she be so rude! If I were you, I would demand a formal apology from her, no, no, this can’t be tolerated. I always knew that she was a bit of a… He points his bony finger at his temple and slowly turns it twice in a small circle. You know what they say about frustrated old single women. I just smile.

He keeps talking for a while and slowly shuts up. People calm themselves down and start to faithfully fill the endless Excel sheets. I don’t feel like doing anything so I watch YouTube, pretending to work and type, joining the quotidian dance. My boss walks by and today, instead of winking at her pet, she gives me a sympathetic smile. I stare back at her, poised to be ready to change the Chrome tab if she ever comes near me. She says we all should grab a cup of coffee in the afternoon. I smile but do not nod since I lack the patience to play yet another role-playing game with bimbos. Outside the window, people come and go, talking on their phones. Cars honk like beats in a jungle. I drift back to my daydreams once again.

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