Robert Colpitts

Sam, excited, shows up at the CORPORATE HOME BASE of the educational exploitation company that he has been working for for some years.  Today is BE A MANAGEMENT BOSS DAY, and Sam couldn’t be happier.  Corporate is on the twelfth floor of a large building, and he has to show his ID in order to get a picture of himself on a sticker that he has to put on his chest.  The elevators have music and tiny TVs.  Sam is wearing a tie.  The carpet smells clean.  The doors to the office on the twelfth floor are also locked, and a cute little secretary has to buzz him in.  He has to sign in again.  He has to wait.  Security is good here.  People are walking down hallways carrying paper.  Work is being done.  Work he shall manage.

He waits.  The waiting-sofa is comfortable.  The coffee-waiting-empty-table is clean.  Sam pulls a magazine from his briefcase and reads.  Twenty minutes pass.  He worries.  Is he supposed to be here?  Did someone forget him?  One secretary is twirling her hair and staring at her computer screen.  The other is talking on her cell phone.  Sam decides against asking them why things are taking so long.

Half an hour passes.  Sam worries.  If someone he knows sees him there, he will have been caught waiting.  But if no one sees him, the secretaries will know he has been forgotten.  They will know he is purposeless and unnecessary.  Yet, if someone does find him, they will have shown that he is purposeless and unnecessary.  He turns his eyes down.

After forty-five minutes, Sam has to urinate.  Sam approaches the desk, and the hair-twirler gives him directions to the bathroom and the three-digit code he needs to open the door.  Sam is somewhat calmed by the additional security.  The code works.  Sam enters the bathroom and urinates without splashing by pointing the urine stream above the level of the toilet-water-line.  He washes his hands, and appreciates the hand drier and the soap.  He has to be buzzed into the office again.  He returns to his sofa, and reads his magazine again.  He has been there an hour, and when he finishes his magazine, two hours have passed.  His embarrassment has calmed somewhat.  Since no one has asked him what he is doing there, he settles in. 

Another hour passes.  Sam is bored.  Emboldened by his boredom, he strikes up a conversation with the hair-twirler.  She tells him that there is a room with coffee and tea and donuts and bagels and fruit over down the hallway there.  Sam smiles.  “Oh, that sounds nice,” he says, “do you mind watching my coat and briefcase, and if anyone needs me, just tell them where I am.  Name is Sam.”  The hair-twirler nods and returns to her screen.  Sam wanders into the room with tables and coffee and bagels and donuts.  He has some coffee.  He has a sesame bagel with cream cheese.  Toasted.  He makes eye contact with people who make eye contact, and laughs to himself when people who enter for a bagel make a joke or talk about a television show he is somewhat familiar with.  Finding the environment pleasant, and a large round table with many hard chairs preferable to a large round table with one soft sofa, Sam moves his jacket and briefcase to the coffee-donut-bagel-tea-water-talking-lunch-bag room, and settles in.  He did not tell the secretaries where he was going, but he does not care.

Hours pass.  People nod at him when they enter, and nod at him when they leave.  Sam has a strong desire to check his email, so he leaves his briefcase and coat, and looks for an empty computer.  To his surprise, there are rows and rows of empty desks with computers sitting idly.  He returns to get his briefcase and coat, and he finds Faith sitting at his table.

“Sam, what are you doing?”

Sam does not answer.

“Sam, let’s go.”

Sam sits in his chair with a thump.

“Faith, I don’t want to go.  I am supposed to be a manager today.  I haven’t even started.”

Faith smiles.  “But, Sam, you’re almost done!  The only thing you have left to do is to feel self-aggrandizing and to do something that proves it.”

Sam hears Faith.  He takes in a breath.  He leaves his rib cage hanging when he lets out that breath.  He feels large.  Important.  In charge.

“Now, find something to be in charge of.”

Sam looks around the room, he sees the bagels and decides that he is charge of keeping the bagels organized.  He walks over to the bagels.  He organizes them.  He decides that the cream cheese should not have flecks of bagel in it, so he picks out each fleck.  He decides that this policy should be implemented corporation-wide, so he finds a computer and sends an email to all district-regional-national-local managers telling them to communicate to all their education-exploitation-ground-force workers the new bagel organization policy.  He is pleased when he finds that he has received his own email from his own district-regional-national-local manager.  He returns to Faith. 

Faith:  “How do you feel?”

Sam:  “Like I could go home, take off my tie, and have a WIFE.”

Faith:  “What have you done?”

Sam:  “So much that it will require a committee of three to tell the tale.”

Faith:  “And tomorrow?”

Sam:  “What is a tomorrow?”

Faith smiles at Sam.  She pats him on the back. 

Sam smiles the only way that Sam can–broadly.

(Though secretly, as he exits the building, he thinks people are trying to take his job away from him.  He probably should have managed the font color, time-idioms, and hallway-passing policies.)