Gridlock

by Ben Elton

  'Your non-walking status,' he said, in a flash of particularly uninspired inspiration.

  'Oh,' said Deborah. 'OK, Rod, I'll forget about it.'

  'Will you?' said Rod, his face a picture of concern and admiration. 'Will you really?'

  'Sure,' said Deborah.

  'That's super,' said Rod, delighted at having put her at her ease.

  The interview began. Deborah explained that she had just taken her examinations in graphics and design and went on to expand on how she felt that this training would provide a good grounding for work in promotions.

  But Deborah knew that, as she spoke, her chair was growing. Its arms were expanding upwards to envelop her, the wheels creeping outwards across the floor. She almost seemed to be shrinking into it as the handles behind her head touched the ceiling and the foot rests crept towards the panel, and began to push against the table, behind which her three interrogators sat.

  Before long the chair was as big as the room, it was forcing Rod and his two colleagues against the wall. Such was its size and dominance that it took a great deal of concentration for them to make out Deborah at all, perched far back, as she was, in the giant seat.

  Every time the interviewers attempted to shrink the chair it got bigger, backing them further and further into the corner . . . As Deborah improvised a pretty good argument as to why she would make a good promotions woman, the panel's minds raced along the myriad problems which they saw ahead, regarding the employment of that chair. Would it fit between the desks? How would it travel to showrooms and displays? Could it get in when it got there? How many demands would it make on other workers? How would a car buyer feel confronted by a piece of transport for the lame? Would it depress people?

  The answers to all these questions were depressingly negative. How else could they be, considering that the chair now filled the entire room, the foot rests sticking out of the windows and the handles cracking the plaster on the ceiling? Eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime, an acceptable twenty-three of the allotted thirty minutes had passed and Rod drew the proceedings to a close.

  'Thanks, Deborah,' he gushed. 'That was marvellous, really fantastic. I mean really fantastic,' and Rod meant it. He found the fact that Deborah could talk at all most impressive, and also very brave. 'We still have quite a few people to see but really, I mean really, you were terrific.'

  Rod leapt up gallantly to open the door for Deborah, attempting to imply with his body language that holding the door open for a cripple was not something he expected any gratitude for, it was just something he was happy to do as one person to another, because obviously Deborah was a person.

  After Deborah had gone, the three panel members, out of a mutual sense of guilt, went through the motions of discussing her rather than the chair. She was a charming and intelligent girl, they assured each other, each attempting to outdo the others in demonstrating how much they had attempted to look at Deborah's candidature in a positive light.

  Having done this for a moment or two, with anguished reluctance, the panel moved onto the practicalities of employing Deborah, addressing themselves, as they felt they must do, to whether it was fair to the company, to other employees. Rod even wondered whether it would be fair to Deborah herself, but he was never called upon to expand further on this curious worry because the intelligent nods that he received belied any further explanation.

  Finally, and with the utmost reluctance, it was agreed that there was no place for Deborah at Global Motors, if for no other reason than that she was a fire hazard.

  Actually, Deborah's position at Global was about to rise with remarkable speed. Her interview having concluded early, Deborah emerged from under Rod's protective arm to discover that her minder had not yet returned to escort her out of the building.

  'Could you tell the lady that I made my own way out?' she enquired of the two other candidates who were sitting waiting. They promised to do this through sympathetic smiles, which hid the fact that they were thinking, 'Bet she gets it because she's disabled.'

  UP IN THE WORLD

  Once on the loose, Deborah set about finding the executive lift. She guessed that it would be somewhere in the same area of those lifts provided for the common herd. After all, it would be an exclusive lift indeed that had its own separate shaft. Sure enough, on returning to the lift area, Deborah spotted the discreet, unmarked sliding door beyond the stand-up ashtray and knew that there lay her only route to the penthouse offices. As Deborah had suspected, a key was required to summon the lift. Ostensibly, this was a security measure but, of course, the real reason was to avoid the pristine executive environment being polluted by the foul, rank and stinking air of non-executives.

  This little example of corporate elitism is one of the numerous ways by which the pecking orders and promotion structures are defined in commercial life. It is rather difficult to properly gauge rank and status when everyone wears much the same suit, so little signs and symbols have been devised. You can't tell a colleague how much you earn, but you can make a point of visiting the loo at the same time as he does, and then grandly disappearing into the senior management lav. This confirms your relative status. There are just as many drips on the floor of the executive bog as in the ordinary one, but the point is, they are executive drips.

  The most meaningful badge of rank in any large company is, of course, what car they give you. The motor that you park in the company car park tells everybody what you earn and who you can boss about. One day business people will probably dispense with confusing terms of rank such as 'under manager' and 'junior executive', and will simply define people's status by their cars.

  'Well, son, you'll start off as a Ford Escort, like every young lad, but if you work hard and keep your nose clean, who knows, in ten years you could be a Granada, perhaps one day even a Jaguar like me.'

  This snobbery is, of course, wonderful news for the car makers who delight in endlessly producing minor variations of the same car so that the fleet managers of large companies can go mad trying to assess the career implications of awarding someone an electronic radio aerial or alloy wheels whilst his furious colleagues only get a lockable glove compartment. This method of promotion is also a good way of saving money, because it is possible to honour an employee much more cheaply than by giving him or her a pay rise. One can simply replace his Ford Sierra with a Ford Sierra TP (Toss Pot), thus allowing him to rush home shouting 'Darling, they've given me the tinted sunroof!', this small reward being much magnified by the fact that Roger and Bill's new cars do not even have electric windows.

  BRIEF ENCOUNTER

  Anyway, the immediate upshot of this corporate snobbery was that Deborah would require the assistance of an executive with a key to the lift in order to reach Sam Turk.

  Deborah's first problem, of course, was to avoid running into her minder, who would no doubt shortly be coming to pick her up. To this end, Deborah summoned a non-executive lift in order to begin her mission on a different floor. The list on the wall went 'ping' to show that a lift was coming and Deborah prayed, as the doors opened, that the minder would not actually be in it. Her prayers were answered, and, struggling to conquer the fear rising in her stomach, Deborah disappeared upwards into the building. She decided to alight at the floor marked 'Accountancy and Contracts'. Deborah was seeking a floor teeming with executives anxious to use their executive lift and she felt that 'Accountancy and Contracts' sounded like the sort of activity where seniority might be required. Whilst in the lift, Deborah had donned the costume which she and Toss had prepared on the previous evening. It was hidden in the bag she kept hung behind, between the handles of her chair, and consisted of a peaked cap marked 'Comet Telecommunications', a small tool bag and Deborah's laminated student union card which she clipped to her breast pocket. Close inspection of this card would, of course, beg the question of why a third year design student, who was entitled to access to all bars and leisure facilities, should necessarily be qualified to mend phones at Global Motors.
However, as close inspection would require someone leaning over her and peering down her front, Deborah reckoned she would get away with it. Again Deborah was relying on her apparent helplessness to allay any suspicion. She only hoped that she would not be collared by some flustered employee saying, 'Just the person I need. Every time I try to phone in for the cricket score I get a recorded tape about Mandy, who says she's a naughty girl and would I like to hear about her melons?'

  And so Deborah sat by the lifts of the 'Accountancy and Contracts' floor of the Global Motors building and waited for an executive. Non-executives came, and non-executives went, until eventually her patience was rewarded.

  'Say, listen, can you let me back in this thing?' she said as a purposeful man with a key approached the unmarked door. 'They have a fax up on the top tomatoes' floor which seems to be getting messages from Mars, and kinda enigmatic ones at that. They let me in at reception, but I goofed and got out here.'

  They seemed to like their executives rude at Global. The man did not even answer Deborah, he simply nodded her into the lift and then followed her. He punched the top floor button for Deborah but himself alighted on the next floor up from Accountancy and Contracts. Deborah did not attempt to thank him, the man clearly was not in the mood for small talk.

  ENGINEERING A CONFRONTATION

  The executive floor was rather luxuriously carpeted. This was a bit of a blow for Deborah as carpets slow wheelchairs right down, also, unless the carpet is extremely securely fitted, it is very easy to drag the thing up into a ruck whilst turning. Still, there was nothing she could do about the interior design. Deborah had a job to do and the job was to unearth Sam Turk, confront him and wrest from him Geoffrey's design. A tall order indeed, but Deborah, who regularly had to do battle in the supermarkets of Swiss Cottage, knew a thing or two about tall orders.

  'Excuse me, I have to check some phone wiring in the corridor outside Mr Turk's office,' Deborah said to a passing executive-level secretary . . . 'His automatic dial keeps ringing the Finchley Road Pizza Shed and they're threatening to sue.'

  'Well I haven't heard of—' the secretary attempted to say, but Deborah interrupted her.

  'It's just in the corridor, I have to run a volto-joule reverse-current meter over it,' she said, holding up a big cooking thermometer on a spike that she used once a year for roasting the Thanksgiving turkey. Deborah always celebrated Thanksgiving. She considered herself an American (US) first and a Jew a very very long way second. The thermometer, a highly credible piece of technology, was sufficient to convince the hesitant secretary and she pointed the way to Turk's office.

  It was only now that the full terror of the situation began to weigh a little upon Deborah. Shortly she was going to have to act, only a wall separated her from her prey. She felt a little like a mouse stalking a lion and an almost overwhelming desire to make a bolt for it welled up inside her.

  'Courage, Deborah,' she whispered to herself. 'Courage, you schmuck. If more people would'a had courage, Hitler would'a stayed a corporal.'

  All her life Deborah had been taught that those who fail to stand up for what is right share the guilt for the wickedness of the world with those who actually champion evil.

  'Easy to say, Poppa,' Deborah whispered to herself as she positioned her wheelchair by an electric wall socket. 'But these people blew my pal's head off with a sawn-off shotgun. You come stand up to 'em.'

  The memory of Geoffrey's demise lent an equal measure of both courage and fear to Deborah's emotions, so all in all, the memory of Geoffrey's demise was not a lot of help.

  Deborah could hear discussion going on inside Sam's office, so she knew that she would have to wait. Tackling one able-bodied murderer would be difficult enough, she did not want him surrounded by henchmen. Slowly but surely, the room began to empty as earnest-looking executives emerged from Sam's office door. They passed Deborah, who was earnestly waving her turkey thermometer at an electric plug socket and scratching her head with a screwdriver. They all gave her a little smile, feeling rather proud that Global, unbeknownst to them, pursued such an equal opportunities policy. Deborah prayed that Sam himself would not emerge and depart for some fifteen-course executive lunch, leaving her with the necessity of pretending to be fixing a telephone line in an electric plug socket with something that belonged up a turkey, for hours on end.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE BATTLE BEGINS

  DO NOT DISTURB

  Eventually, Sam's meeting seemed to be over. No-one had emerged from the office for a full ten minutes and Deborah could hear no talking from within. With sinking heart she realized that Sam was alone, the time had come to do it.

  'If I'm going to take this mother,' Deborah said to herself, attempting with little success to stiffen her resolve with tough talking, 'the time is now.'

  She took from her bag a neat little sign that she had made. It said DO NOT DISTURB UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR BUTT KICKED CLEAN TO DETROIT' and was signed, Turk. Deborah had done enough research to have a vague handle on Sam Turk's way of communicating. Very gently she hung her sign on the door handle, of course she was aware that this was not the usual method by which executives ensured that they were not disturbed. Under normal circumstances, when a top dog required absolute privacy, if, for instance, they wanted to shag an employee or prise up a floorboard and count their ill-gotten tax concessions, they would bark curtly into an intercom and the door would instantly be guarded by a stern-faced private secretary with a severe bun and an armour-plated brassiere. None the less, Deborah, whose whole strategy was based on bluff, thought that there was a fairly good chance that any minion, faced with her little sign, would think twice before disobeying it.

  Deborah took a deep breath, reminded herself one more time that if the worst came to the worst she must remember to keep her legs apart, and opened the door.

  Inside the room Sam Turk was sitting with his back to the door, and as it happened he was communicating curtly via an intercom with a stern-faced private secretary with a severe bun and an armour-plated brassiere.

  'If anyone from the Union of Oil turns up you send them straight through, OK? No coffee, no how are yous, nothing, just send them through.'

  The stern-faced private secretary in the outer office was rather surprised at this instruction. In the past she had noted that Sam was rather irritated by her stern manner. In Detroit Sam had been guarded by a blonde Californian called Farrah who gave off such a positive charge she could wipe the data off a floppy disk. Everything in Farrah's world oozed with sun-drenched enthusiasm, she could never have simply offered someone a coffee, rather she would announce that she had some great coffee . . .

  'I also have great decaf, plus I have sugar. I have half sweetener, or I have whole sweetener, and I promise no bitter aftertaste, I use it myself. I have great cream which is in this cute jug here, but I also have great milk, skimmed, or full if you prefer. The pot's hot so just yell for more. Enjoy.'

  By the time Farrah had finished offering you a cup of coffee you felt like you'd had a massage. It is a little known fact that the reason for the dramatic reversal in fortunes of the awesomely powerful US economy is that they simply let their language get out of hand. So much time is spent greeting each other, describing the coffee and sending out for 'those great chocolate-chip diet muffins they have at Bronski's', that there is no time left to keep up with the Japanese.

  THE MOUSE AND THE LION

  Sam heard the door and swung round.

  'What the hell do you want? My phones are fine, get out,' he barked.

  'I ain't no telephone engineer, Mr Turk,' said Deborah. 'My name is Mary Hannay. I'm with the FBI.'

  'Sure you are, little girl, why and I bet you have a Superwoman costume on under that cute blouse,' answered Sam, and, having no time to deal with lunatics in wheelchairs, pressed the button on his intercom. 'Miss Hodges, could you please—'

  'The Bureau is kinda interested in your hydrogen engine, Mr Turk,' snapped Deborah. Sam Turk looked at h
er thoughtfully.

  'Forget it, Miss Hodges,' he said, taking his finger from the button. Sam looked at Deborah thoughtfully some more, he did not know what to make of her. She certainly did not look like a federal agent.

  'So what is the FBI doing rolling around in wheelchairs dressed up as telephone engineers?' he asked, not unreasonably.

  'We have no authority in this country,' said Deborah, desperately improvising. She knew this nonsense would not lead her far, but she needed to get a little closer to him.

  'I guess that's so,' said Sam, walking round to the front of his desk. He did not know who this woman was, but there was one thing of which he was already certain: she was no FBI agent. If the FBI wanted to talk to him they would knock on the door and say 'Hi, it's the FBI' and they certainly would not send a smartarse chick who looked barely out of her teens. However, as she had mentioned the engine, Sam knew that he must tread a little carefully.

  'Kind of an inconvenient cover, ain't it?' he enquired, leaning against his desk. 'A wheelchair.'

  'The wheelchair isn't a cover, Mr Turk, I'm paraplegic. The FBI is an equal opportunities employer,' answered Deborah.

  Deborah always made a habit of confronting every assumption she came across regarding the incongruity of a paraplegic being somewhere or doing something. On this occasion it was unfortunate, because Sam remembered something. 'Paraplegic' is not a word one encounters all the time, but Sam had come across it only a few days before. It had cropped up in a conversation that he had conducted over a scrambled telephone with the head of Euro Despatch after the successful conclusion of Sam's commission regarding the despatch of a certain gerbil named Geoffrey Peason. Euro Despatch were an efficient firm and they offered a degree of background information on the jobs they carried out. Sam had learnt that the gerbil Peason had eventually been discovered at the home of a young female American paraplegic student and a young black traffic warden. He even remembered her name.