Polluted Waters and Ugly Reflections
The screen wobbles and we flashback to mid-afternoon on Friday October 8th. A man in a cowboy hat has sent the entire office staff into a crazed panic. Terror is stalking the corridors. Shutters are being closed and blinds are being pulled.
Somebody shouts "Lord Allen's here!". I glance up and notice one of my colleagues diving under his desk. But his actions are premature - the man in the cowboy hat is on site but has been unable to breach the building itself. He bangs on the door again and again, and when he tired of this, he stalks the perimeter and taps on windows.
Now Geoff has gone to the door and is raving, Basil Fawlty style. "We're not in! Go away, there's nobody in here!" he bellows, whilst others giggle nervously behind their blinds. A combination of Friday afternoon madness and genuine fear at the prospect of being collared by this twisted freak has brought the office to a standstill. The word is that his personal hygiene curdles milk at fifty paces. I pray I never have the chance to confirm this.
"We need to put a notice on the window," somebody suggests. "Owing to unforeseen circumstances, we're all dead." I nod my approval and consider stacking up boxes in the window.
In the next office Geoff is peering under the blinds. He reports that the man in the cowboy hat has entered the other office across the car park. But there is a new problem... somebody's making a break for it! They need to get to the other office on some last minute business. The horror is palpable.
"Don't! He'll follow you back in!" screams a colleague whilst toying with the photocopier. But the mist is beginning to rise, and soon the word comes that the man in the cowboy hat has given up and left.
What is going on here? This man, I am told, comes around every Friday afternoon. But here's the rub. He's not an employee, a customer or a contractor. He just is. And nobody can bear to talk to him, so why in the name of all that is holy does he come? For the scenery? Every day we deal in nothing but crap, thousands of tonnes of life's useless, malodorous detritus...so you will appreciate we're no tourist attraction. The only one who can answer these questions is the man in the cowboy hat, and I don't see a queue forming to ask him.
"You're my heroes," Sharon says. "Closing the blinds and leaping under desks...I couldn't have survived without you."
A strange comment on a strange day. The man in the cowboy hat hasn't been back since that day a couple of weeks ago, but it is not my problem and never has been. Soon I will be leaving this office for good, and will reflect on my time there as unnecessary but financially useful. I have been existing in a holding pattern until I had the money to escape.
Perhaps I will also consider why every office seems to think of themselves as slightly crazy, a bit bonkers, a barely contained seething caudron of quirkiness. The simple fact is everybody in the country is unhinged, and every morning when they enter work they carefully pack away their personalities into a holdall, shove it under the desk and only retrieve them again come 5.00pm. But it's still there, trying desperately to get out. Any time the office's mask slips and something weird happens, those holdalls explode and, like Pandora's Box, all the bad craziness emerges and darts and swoops about, over chairs and under desks, teasing the cabin fever out of everyone until the whole place is gibbering and laughing like asylum inmates.
Occasionally someone gets this strange electricity in their brain and it won't leave. They become pariahs to the game of repression played by each office worker against their will. And soon enough they begin to turn up every Friday afternoon wearing a cowboy hat and smelling overwhelmingly of milk. Are we to pity these deluded fools? Or draw the blinds and leap under the desk?
Either way, I'm leaving soon and I won't be back.
Somebody shouts "Lord Allen's here!". I glance up and notice one of my colleagues diving under his desk. But his actions are premature - the man in the cowboy hat is on site but has been unable to breach the building itself. He bangs on the door again and again, and when he tired of this, he stalks the perimeter and taps on windows.
Now Geoff has gone to the door and is raving, Basil Fawlty style. "We're not in! Go away, there's nobody in here!" he bellows, whilst others giggle nervously behind their blinds. A combination of Friday afternoon madness and genuine fear at the prospect of being collared by this twisted freak has brought the office to a standstill. The word is that his personal hygiene curdles milk at fifty paces. I pray I never have the chance to confirm this.
"We need to put a notice on the window," somebody suggests. "Owing to unforeseen circumstances, we're all dead." I nod my approval and consider stacking up boxes in the window.
In the next office Geoff is peering under the blinds. He reports that the man in the cowboy hat has entered the other office across the car park. But there is a new problem... somebody's making a break for it! They need to get to the other office on some last minute business. The horror is palpable.
"Don't! He'll follow you back in!" screams a colleague whilst toying with the photocopier. But the mist is beginning to rise, and soon the word comes that the man in the cowboy hat has given up and left.
What is going on here? This man, I am told, comes around every Friday afternoon. But here's the rub. He's not an employee, a customer or a contractor. He just is. And nobody can bear to talk to him, so why in the name of all that is holy does he come? For the scenery? Every day we deal in nothing but crap, thousands of tonnes of life's useless, malodorous detritus...so you will appreciate we're no tourist attraction. The only one who can answer these questions is the man in the cowboy hat, and I don't see a queue forming to ask him.
"You're my heroes," Sharon says. "Closing the blinds and leaping under desks...I couldn't have survived without you."
A strange comment on a strange day. The man in the cowboy hat hasn't been back since that day a couple of weeks ago, but it is not my problem and never has been. Soon I will be leaving this office for good, and will reflect on my time there as unnecessary but financially useful. I have been existing in a holding pattern until I had the money to escape.
Perhaps I will also consider why every office seems to think of themselves as slightly crazy, a bit bonkers, a barely contained seething caudron of quirkiness. The simple fact is everybody in the country is unhinged, and every morning when they enter work they carefully pack away their personalities into a holdall, shove it under the desk and only retrieve them again come 5.00pm. But it's still there, trying desperately to get out. Any time the office's mask slips and something weird happens, those holdalls explode and, like Pandora's Box, all the bad craziness emerges and darts and swoops about, over chairs and under desks, teasing the cabin fever out of everyone until the whole place is gibbering and laughing like asylum inmates.
Occasionally someone gets this strange electricity in their brain and it won't leave. They become pariahs to the game of repression played by each office worker against their will. And soon enough they begin to turn up every Friday afternoon wearing a cowboy hat and smelling overwhelmingly of milk. Are we to pity these deluded fools? Or draw the blinds and leap under the desk?
Either way, I'm leaving soon and I won't be back.
posted by Jamie at 1:01 PM
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