by Chris Welsh
Chapter Two. 08:50am
DETAILS, DETAILS.
So my workplace equalled the typical office where everything stayed the same, every day, every week, for as long as a man could stand it before cracking and leaving in a hail of gunfire, spilling packs of stolen Post-It notes from a backpack as he stormed and screamed out of the building.
Miraculously there has only been one instance of such a thing happening at Tall Trees.
No one was actually shot, because people who work in offices all their lives are rarely adept at shooting, but it's the reason for the security guards. Also guns became frowned upon on all floors and we've been happily spree-free for a couple of years.
I say it is miraculous, a stone-cold surprise even, because of the isolation and subsequent surrealism of the place in which I spent my days.
Yes, the isolation. My workplace boasted one sizeable unique quality; its baffling location. The place deserved the name Tall Trees because, well, the only things around for miles in any direction are some pretty bloody tall trees. Dead set in the middle of a large forest, someone decided to construct what could only be called a 'compound'; a few-acre-square of concrete with huge, unscalable walls around the whole thing. Then they built a cold, out-dated office block and a few other buildings inside this compound and walked away, dusting their hands off. A shining testament to sterile construction carved ruthlessly into nature which also happened to be a colossal bitch to get to.
Employees arrived at work via a shuttle that linked the office to the nearest Big City, a suburb of which I called home. Every morning after my thirty-five minute cross-town bus journey I treated myself to the luxury of squashing on to a crowded, demoralising train and shooting off at high-speed to spend eight fun hours sat at a desk before shooting off again in the opposite direction. The only respite came in the form of an hour-long lunch break thrown somewhere in the middle, during which I typically ate a home-made pork sandwich and either a Twix or a Yorkie, depending on what my house-mate left unguarded in the fridge.
I would liken the journey to sheep or cattle herding...but I'd never heard of a cow riding on a shuttle.
The layout of the office complex only added to the disbelief its geographical location generated. Nothing about it justified the effort it must have took to construct. After all, the company operated as a hate-sponge that fielded the complaints of other companies who didn't care. Nothing more than a collection of call centres in blank, open-floor offices that smelled like damp and failure. I handled minor complaints as part of a smallish team of people trained to convince even the most maniacal person to pull the rope down from the rafters so the next team in the process could offer them a ten percent discount on a future order and send them on their way with a cheer. We could've been anywhere in the world, in any city, in any skyscraper ever built on a handy bus route, yet they abandoned us in the middle of nowhere instead.
The large outer wall practically screamed overkill as if the designer aimed for 'Villainous Stronghold Hideaway' and not '9-5 administration resort'. At roughly thirty-five feet high and a fair few feet thick it'd take a very determined Customer Service Rep to break out, or a tremendously angry customer to break in. The main office building stood ten stories high, smack-bang in the middle of it all. Two entrances to the compound existed, both with heavy, lockable gates; one for us minions only, reached via the shuttle (or a long trek through the trees) and another 'around the back' for deliveries. That one attached to a dirt road that led off to who-knows-where.
The only other building of note between the office and the nearest city was a long-abandoned holiday resort, the type marketed to people who wished to experience outdoor life without enduring any of that 'camping' or 'doing without city convenience' silliness. All log cabins, indoor pools and communal fire pits for barbecues. Even, I believe, a man-made river to fish in. No tents, snakes or adventure allowed.
That's how deep in the forest we were; we ventured where woodland holidaymakers no longer dared. The realm of Sasquatch sightings and occult signs made from sticks and string hanging from every other branch. If the building were a rickety shack, I'd sit next to a psychopathic inbred murderer all day long whilst he sharpened his axe and I talked sense into Mrs Crawley, 42 from Swindon, who mistakenly took out insurance on a mobile phone.
The main office joined a few smaller buildings, storage containers, made of green corrugated steel with big locked doors that I'd never seen open.
An incredibly pointless section lined like a car park flanked the building, despite employees inability to drive to work.
There was also a garden. Not a nice garden.
It had a fountain and other things specifically designed to 'look nice' but came off looking false or boorish at best. The pissing cherub boy once abided proudly with his cock in hand had long-since been censored following a complaint by one of the more useless members of management. Modified to a strictly PG set of guidelines, he appeared to be a small naked boy with wings and a toy rocket held at crotch level.
Which he pissed through.
However, even with the company's myriad logical flaws and all my complaints, they were exemplary at paying me each month. Possibly the only thing commendable about the place. They paid me like they were legally obligated to do so.
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Despite the insane surroundings I tried my best to stick to a daily routine of doing the same dull things most days of the year. I did my best to live repetitiously so I could easily deviate if necessary, to throw off any floor manager who wished to collar me for a lengthy chat about 'responsibility' or 'targets'. I walked in sullenly each day, shamed myself with nonsense aimed at Susan, sourced a cup of far-too-hot-to-drink-yet tea and sat down at my poky desk. Then I waited for my headset to beep so I could be rude, obnoxious and only minimally helpful to a stranger, earning a few pennies over £9.00 for each hour I did this.
My biggest gripe was that all social networks and external email were completely blocked by over-zealous IT restrictions. Though all gossipy news sites remained, as well as most porn sites. They didn't actively prohibit me from staring at naked people during work hours, but they did hammer all messages to my house-mate to death, meaning I could never find out if I needed to pick up a pint of milk on my way home. Any attempt to do so met with flashing red warning signs that dominated the screen until an IT tech moppet trundled out of their cavern to relay the speech about not wasting work time.
It was disgusting, the way they expected me to come to work and not skive off all day.
Employees were also banned from having mobile phones anywhere on site. They instructed everyone to deposit any such item in 'secure' lockers before boarding the shuttle. Instead I left mine languishing on my bedside table, announcing the arrival of the occasional text to an empty room. They caught and fired the last person to sneak a phone into the main building.
We got an email about it.
We got emails about most things.
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I used to brim with drive and ambition and those other qualities naive kids swear by when they first venture out in to the great wide world, away from school and lectures and timetables. But I quickly learned certain facts about how small and shitty the great wide world actually was. After a three year long reality check, trying my hardest and going unnoticed, achieving no promotion or pat on the back, I considered myself a veteran of office work. For some time, I accomplished basically nothing, under-performing to an almost admirable standard. If no one actively told me to work hard and work fast, I'd work soft and at a moderate pace. I became adept at skipping calls, using my gut to determine exactly how big of a hassle the person on the other end would likely be, before deftly tapping the button that tossed the call back to the hell of hold music and passive-aggressive suggestions to generally go away and cease complaining.
I didn't want to motivate myself for no good reason.
My ultimate goal was to work just hard enough to avoid the attention of people with the power to s
ack me and it proved a flawless system. I was happy, they were blissfully unaware, and the customers I bumped never had to speak to me which was really their blessing in an unhelpful disguise.
Why work hard when you don't have to? Lazy doesn't even come in to it.