A Day at the Office

It didn’t happen overnight. Something like this takes time. It takes years. Years and minutes. Thousands and thousands of minutes. Minute, minutia played out over the course of years. Minutia teased out into minutes. Scrolling minutia right to left. Accompanied by more minutia graphically displayed from top to bottom. Sponsored content of course. It’s all teased out into an endless string of so called events, one leading into the other into a cavalcade of disaster. Each one sirens a call for change. A reason that this time, this time it is a bridge to far. Now we have reached critical mass. It all is going to end badly. Here’s why this is his fault. Here is why too. An expert discusses it with another expert.

“This is it” he says to the glass. 25 stories up. His forehead is pressed against the glass. He can’t help but envision movie clips every time he does this. “I think I see my father” he mumbles to himself. He’s not even sure if that is the correct quote. He’s sure a remake is coming and he’ll be able to tell his kids he remembers when the original came out. As his dad did to him and said it was John Wayne and not Clit Eastwood. Clint dad, omg.

His life is an endless reel of thoughts he isn’t sure are his own. They are contrived from a life that has constantly absorbed media. Media in so many forms he doesn’t know what is and isn’t his own organic, original thought.

He turns. Closes his eyes. Runs. Runs as hard as he can. Step. Launch. Propels his body. Out. Flying. Falling. It’s done. I’ve done it. Fights to open his eyes. To see it falling towards him at 9.3 feet per second or some specific rate gravity falls at. He’d look it up on Google but he doesn’t have time right now. He has a 9:30 meeting with the sidewalk he hasn’t cancelled and can’t get out of at this point. Everything is screaming in his head. Freedom. No. This was a mistake. It’s all happening to fast. You can’t take this back. It’s too late. Too god damn late. He’s flailing. He’s turned over to his back. Helpless. He’s not looking back. Another clip enters his head. Another man falling. Jacket flailing. Superman? No, “yippee kaiyaee motherfucker” His white shirt compressed as he reaches back to where he came from. His body U Shaped. Soles of his new Florsheim’s glaring back at the camera. His tie blue striped tie trailing him. Whisping in the wind. His eyes in apparent surprise. What have I done? It has registered the finality of this decision.

He’s made the leap. In he goes. Into the content. He’s become the social media. He’s in and not looked back. He doesn’t care. All this means is more time to scroll. Scroll through the life he is missing out on. The life other people live. The life he is apparently supposed to be living but can’t. Can’t because some idiot out there has ruined it for him. And it’s not going to get better. Not until real change happens.
He is no longer falling. The door is closing to the empty room behind him. The meeting was cancelled. Too much is going on today. “We can’t meet” The text read, 7 minutes after he sat down. Swiveling back and forth trying to not be on his phone reading bullshit his friend from high school whom he avoided in Target last week is doing on Vacation in Rehoboth. God he got fat.

What the hell was he supposed to do. The leap would never have happened anyway. The windows don’t open he says to himself. You wouldn’t do it anyway. Why bother. Before he left, he lapped the table. Pushing in chairs. Stacking the coasters. 4 in each. 2 two a table. Placed the phone in between them. The sign on the wall says to leave it as you found it. If he left it like he found it, he’d be the one to get the god damned email from Lois that cc’d his boss saying he, Johnson didn’t turn the lights out or toss the cans from the clients.
The door is shut behind him. He’s reached into his pocket and disappeared. First day of school. No one tells people their kids aren’t that cute. God your kid looks just like you. Sorry.

He doesn’t know what he wants to do anymore. He doesn’t care. He says this too himself as he put his escape back in his pocket. It’s the latest one of course. 4GB month. No, the company doesn’t pay for it. They expect him to answer the emails sent on it though. He doesn’t have the balls to ask for a stipend for it. No one does. Everyone bitches about it though. They all fucking hate having to answer the emails that roll in after 8pm and then having to crack open the laptop provided to them on day one. Everyone complains, but no one does a god damn thing about it. No one can grasp that collectively they could make change, if they all got a backbone and asked for change, together. But why, they all have 2 cars and 2 kids and 4 week’s vacation. It’s all fine.

It’s a left turn out of the conference room and then a right 10 feet after the men’s room. He runs his fingers along the fabric of the cubes. Metal. Fabric. Metal. Aisle. Metal. Fabric. Metal. Fabric. “hey Larry”. Doesn’t wait for a response. 3 more cubes down and he can plop down in his less than ergonomic desk chair. Before Johnson sits, he slips his hand into his khaki’s. Flat front. Brown Belt. Blue Button Down Polo. Yes, with the horse. The pants are Banana Republic. Not on sale. It’s embarrassing shopping for stuff on sale. Slides the phone on his desk. Not before he looks again.

7+1, 8+1, 9+1, are you one of the 5% of American’s that know the answer? What’s your name mean in piglatin?

CTL + ALT + Delete. Cjohnson TY4thisJOb#1 for the 18 time today. Company policy says he has to lock his desktop. Yes. Lois is on his shit about it too. He knows It’s illegal to drag that fucking whore from her hair down the aisle slamming her idiotic head into each and every cube corner. I don’t have anything private on my computer that someone is going to steal and take to a competitor Lois! NO ONE CARES LOIS! Swing. Looks down to see her eyes clamped shut. Hands with her freshly done nails gripping her hair, trying to yank it from his two handed grip. Bam! Whipping her idiotic head to the left. Walking backwards. Dragging the 185lb useless Ann Taylor Loft mannequin with as much resentment as his ungrateful fuck of a son. Bam!!! They don’t care about you!!!! BAM!! Larry looks up, smiles, turns back to his 3 screens. Spreadsheets flicker on. Like I didn’t see you shopping Larry!! Let’s go of hair. Steps over her carcass. Then heads back to his cube. Un-clenches his eyes and opens phone. No F. Scrolls.

You shouldn’t have to Press +1 to hear English. Share if you agree. He hates his fucking Aunt. And the six people that like it. Also relatives of his, of course they are. Reads the news from it. Doesn’t want his employer to see the content. Hillary to speak with Media regarding Free College. Trump to discuss Immigration Plan. Huckabee Disagrees on Iran, Doesn’t Support Terrorism.

Normalized. When did it get normalized? Who is fighting for me. “I’m so tired of this”, he says. He can’t focus on work anymore. It’s coming from everywhere. The stupidity. The hate. The stupidity wrapped in hate. Barreled, gobs of stupidity. Balls of it. Melted down. Compounded with other fossilized pieces of matter. Pigmented. Stretched. Amalgamated. Immolated. Made into a wearable material that can track your steps and for $40 more it will track your heart rate and wick away sweat. All the data pulled from it, that you didn’t realize you agreed to when you downloaded the mandatory app on the app store is to be sold to them. Them. THEM. Those people way smarter than you creating an algorithm that will know when you are going to open your phone and read the content they fed you based on content you read yesterday, last month, last year. Data that was fed to you based on an algorithm they built for someone else in your same demographic they found to also work on White Males 40+ that have researched having their nuts kicked by donkeys because somehow women have been able to turn the tables and have their husbands get vasectomies because they went through the ordeal of providing your child life. As if you have to worry about getting pregnant anymore. Closes eyes sees that clip of Jason Bateman rushing home trying in attempt to get to his wife before she cinches her sweat pants, thus preventing any type of coitus only to be interrupted by the neighbor watering his lawn.

How do I do a god damned VLOOKUP? Christ, that god damned 10 year old in a YouTube video just unlocked his phone, built an app for it, created an open source api that calls twitter and knows when I’m looking a vine of his alleged just turned 18 year old sister. All in the time I tried to understand I have to have my list in fucking alphabetical order. I’m so screwed.

He doesn’t care anymore. He wants to unplug. He wants out. He wants out of this never ending cycle of impending doom. He’s now openly rooting for the apocalypse. When people say something stupid he wishes them dead. His mom included. His wife…no he didn’t type that, she may think he means it and not see he’s kidding. Fuck it!@ He doesn’t care. He’s so tired of fighting. Alone. He does it alone. The only place he finds solace is here. Right Here. Opens it again. No F. A Message.

The ceiling is leaking. Something is wrong with the toilet.

He drops his head down in a heap on his desk. Keyboard jumps. Daddy Needs Coffee mug splashes what’s left of his third Organic knock off K-cup his employer bought from Costco. Droplets run down monitor #3 and his face. And oh just fucking great the cuff of his starched shirt. His Tupperware of uneaten salad doesn’t move. It sits there. Staring at him. His head now laying flush with the desk. It’s coolness comforting his head. Staring at the salad, he sees the lettuce pushed up against the side. He should have eaten it. The doctor said he needs to lose weight.

He closes his eyes. He doesn’t care. He wants to stop fighting. He wants to give up. Pinching the bridge of his nose. The back of his head, balding of course, faces out towards the open.

“You OK?”, She asks. Don’t look at her chest he says to himself. Don’t do it. He did. At least he looked at her eyes first. Then when he broke contact, he didn’t know where else to look. God Damn IT! She’s standing right there. What the hell am I supposed to do with my eyes. She’s leaning with her right side pressed against the end of his cube wall. Half of her hanging into his office, the other half in hers. “Who the hell wears heels like that in the office?”, he says to himself as he rolls his eyes back up to the bridge of her nose. After of course looking again. Sigh…closes eyes, drops head slower this time. She walks away. He wishes smiling at his cuteness. She’s not. She’s smiling with pity.

“I’m Fine”, I was just leaving, “I’ve been working on this spreadsheet all day and can’t get the numbers to come out right.”

He can’t do this anymore. He has nothing more to give. 30 more years to retirement? That fucking kid on youtube just built a website in one 12 minute HD 1020 video! Who are the fucking people that vote for these idiots that want to extend retirement. Are you kidding me? Don’t you know who “they” are that want this? Why are YOU on their side? They are killing us. All of us. You too. You fucking idiot. They are murdering us. They stand us up individually. Fill us full of ideas. Tells us we are fine. We are good alone. We don’t need to all unite. We got you covered. Who believes this load of shit?

He stands up. Folds it up. Puts it into his pocket, puts it into his bag, also Banana Republic, so he can pretend that he’s going to open it when he gets home.

I’ll deal with the Vlookup tomorrow he says to himself.