Storytime
He parked in the back this morning. Last Friday, the entire front entrance was blocked off with caution tape and orange cones. They had the grass all dug up and the groundskeepers were sweating beneath their tan hats, hefting shovelfuls of dirt and planting several rows of pretty, white gladiolas. He had parked on Friday and had to walk all the way around the building, finally arriving at his desk 5 minutes late. Today, he was already 5 minutes late and, to save the risk of another long walk, he just found a shady space beneath a tree in the back, not even chancing the front entrance.
It was an ugly day. The sky was the color of dishwater, and the cars stood shiny in pretty little lines like an army regiment of multicolored beetles. The freeway below sent the bellows of downshifting semi trucks and the frantic honking of horns echoing off the brown grassy hills across the parking lot. If you closed your eyes, though, and let the sun hit your eyelids while the cool breeze lapped against your skin, you could almost believe it was a beautiful day out.
Inside, the atmosphere was electric with excitement. Reporters from a major financial newspaper would be touring the building that day, invited by the company’s megabillionaire managing director in order to prove that the company wasn’t yet going under. The managing director, himself, would be heading the tour - a man of near-celebrity status within the company; spoken of often, but rarely seen outside of economic press conferences. Two weeks ago, the company’s stock took a severe dive, and days later the Managing Director announced via e-mail that he would be laying off 12,000 employees. Family members and friends called him that day after the story hit the online newspapers, asking cautiously how secure his job was.
He felt that his job was safe - of course, they all feel their jobs are safe until they’re dropped out on the street without warning. He wrote training manuals for the customer service department - manuals telling the phone representatives how to listen, how to be polite, and how to solve problems. This, he knew, would never change. There will always be problems, and somebody would need to write manuals, telling the phone reps how to solve them. He was safe, he assured them all. He believed it, too.
The secretaries were running to and fro in a panic, cleaning off empty desks and ensuring the entire department looked its best for the media. Boxes of any kind were snatched from the floor and hidden away in a storage closet, lest they remind the media about the 12,000 people who would soon have to go home to their husbands, wives, kids, boyfriends, girlfriends, or roommates and explain to them that they no longer had a job. Chairs were pushed in. Unused computers were turned on so their screensavers would activate and provide the illusion that an employee still occupied that space. He got up to use the restroom, and returned to find his chair pushed in and desk straightened up. Later, he was asked to keep his trash can underneath his desk, rather than outside the cubicle where he regularly kept it. He had a desktop image of a breathtaking sunset, and he was asked to change it back to the default background - an image of the company logo.
It was very possible that there wasn’t a single person in the entire building who cared less about the tour than he did. Why should he care, really? They weren’t going to interview him. Their presence meant nothing regarding his job security and certainly, anything he did short of creating a scene would have absolutely no effect on the tour whatsoever. It amused him, the way the secretaries scampered from desk to desk with paper towels and bottles of all-purpose cleaner, scrubbing the desktops, picking staples up off the carpet, and ordering people to put their food in their desk drawers until the tour ended.
Then word came in - the tour would occur at 11:00 sharp. The excitement grew exponentially. A note of panic could be heard in the voices of the secretaries as they filled balloons with helium in the copy room to distribute to each desk so the reporters could see how valued all the employees were. As the clock neared 11, people began running, making the final adjustments, ensuring the pantries were spotless and all had a full pot of coffee on the burner.
There was a murmur of excitement as the managing director entered in his suit and tie with an entourage of senior management at his elbows. They gathered by the main door into the department and waited, circled in conversation. Heads popped up over cubicle walls like a prairie dog colony, and a general hush fell over all those not currently taking calls.
As little as he cared, the excitement was too much for him to remain focused on his work (today, it was a manual teaching trainers how to train). He found himself watching the main doors with everyone else, waiting for the reporters. The secretaries sat, visibly tensed, an expression frozen on each face like that of a child on Christmas morning as he waited by the treeful of unopened gifts for his parents to put batteries in the camera.
Then, nothing happened. By 11:30, people started getting up to go on lunch, stealing one final look at the main doors before walking out of the department toward the cafeteria. Still, the managers all stood in their circle, shifting back and forth on feet and glancing at gold wristwatches. After awhile, he also tired of waiting, and put his headphones back on in order to get back to work. He was immediately rushed by no less than three secretaries, demanding that he put his headphones away instantly and not remove them from their hiding place until the tour had concluded.
At noon, the majority of the phone representatives went to lunch. They had no choice - in order to correspond with the call centers in Tucson and Ft. Worth, they had to leave exactly at noon and return exactly at 12:30 - this way the hold time would be kept as low as possible. With nobody on the phones, the room was thrown into near complete silence, everybody afraid to speak for fear of incurring the wrath of the secretaries.
At 12:15, the main doors opened and all heads turned eagerly to see who entered. It wasn’t the reporters - instead, it was a little man in an expensive suit. He whispered to the ring of managers, and then hurried out. The managing director shook his head and then spoke, his voice startlingly loud as it broke the tense silence of the room.
“Can I have your attention everybody? I’ve just got a message that the tour has been cancelled. The reporters had another engagement they had to hurry to. Thank you for your preparation, though, and for all that you do.” Then, with that, he and his entourage had herded out of the main doors.
After the doors closed with a metallic thud, the silence returned to the room. Then, somewhere in the corner opposite him, someone started crying in a low and quiet voice. The sobs were joined by the secretary to his left. Then to his right. He sat with his head down, afraid to make any sound or motion, while several other voices joined in the quiet sobbing. Then, before he could betray himself with any behavior inappropriate for the moment, he sprung from his seat and hurried out the door.
The front door was, in fact open, and he stepped through it and into the dirty sunlight. In the front row of the parking lot, the chauffeur had already helped the managing director into his car and was driving off. The other managers were nowhere to be found. The breeze felt beautiful on his face and when he closed his eyes and turned his head to the sun, his vision was filled with a warm, pink glow. Then, he noticed the dirty heart-shaped prints of a deer that crossed the walkway and headed toward the wrought-iron fence that separated the parking lot from the hills. He followed them backwards across the grass and to the newly-installed planter, where exactly 32 perfect gladiola plants in four pristine rows now stood with their immaculate white flowers neatly eaten off. On the sidewalk next to the flowers, there sat a tiny pile of little brown pellets, about the size of marbles.
He smiled for the first time of the day, and knew everything was going to be just fine.