This is part three. Read part two.
“Hello? John?” Curtis put his pen down on John’s desk and gestured emphatically at him in a last ditch effort to get his attention. Finally, John turned in his chair and looked at him.
“Yeah, yeah Curtis, what’s up?”
“I said, are you finished with yesterdays progstat?”
The ‘progstat.’ Shivers shot up John’s spine at the mere mention. The ‘progstat’ was the latest in a series of ‘effectiveness measurement devices’ thought up by the newly installed manager of their department. The goal of the ‘progstat’, or ‘Daily Progress and Status Update’, which the form proudly announced itself as, was to measure the performance of each employee with such excruciating detail that said employee would become frustrated and quit, thus saving the company money and keeping them from having to lay anybody off.
Thus far, John had managed to keep up with three successive changes to the ‘progstat procedures’, each of which was more inclined to induce dementia than the previous incarnation. At this point, he struggled to remember what he actually did for this company besides report on his progress. In fact, merely filling out the progstat was becoming worthy of a mention on the progstat.
He lethargically reached into his filing box and pulled out a stapled two-page report, laying it out on the desk.
“Here it is, all stamped and stapled and ready to never be looked at.”
“Now John, that’s not the right attitude to have. You know very well that Mr. Davies carefully looks over each progstat to assemble the keydefs at the end of each week.”
Sweet lord. The ‘keydefs’, or ‘Key Deficiencies Report’, was yet another of the new torturous instruments management was using to prune the herd in this department. John paused and strained to determine at what point in his life he became a character in a George Orwell novel.
Curtis took the report into the stack he was carrying and trotted off, presumably to go brown-nose. John turned his gaze to his computer monitor. He studied the contents of the screen intently. The language appeared foreign to him. All at once, he could not remember what he was doing, the name of the company he worked for, or the hair color of his ninth grade geography teacher. His mind drained out as his eyes became fixed on a single word. Every synapse in his brain became completely dedicated to that word. As his focus intensified, he began deconstructing the individual letters that made up the word. And then, the bits that made up each letter. Time stretched on to infinity. Civilizations rose and fell inside the middle of an A.
“Woops, forgot my pen.”
Curtis’ voice sliced through John’s focus like a fine blade, and his existential journey through the alphabet was cut tragically short. Curtis snatched the pen off of the desk, lingering only for a moment before darting out of the cubicle.
John sighed, and scratched the back of his neck, irritating his mosquito bite and sending a sharp pain down his body. All he could think of now was getting home. Of course, he knew that as soon as he got home, all he would think of was going back to work.
Read part four.
Tags: Narratives
guh, I have to know what is going to happen next