Morning all. Quite the generic prompt for a Friday, huh? Personally I love these as my brain has to stretch and latch onto an idea out of the blue with little to suggest a path. Nice mental exercise. So let’s get to stretching and everyone try not to pull a synapse. timers set and off we go.
I like the set up. I have also been reading a lot of Labor History for research lately so I think it is filtering in. I do like the concept of the one quiet person who keeps things running leaving while everyone else scrambles. It could be fun to play with.
Friday, Apil 17th: He shook his head.
He shook his head. Stan stared at the utter chaos before him. He was gone a week. When he left he made certain to clear his in box, both the electronic one and the physical one. Every scrap of paper was filed, every contract copied and sent on it’s way to whoever else needed it for their files. His desk was clear. His laptop was in his bag and before he left he even put his pen cup and note pad in the drawer. As the company no longer felt the need to provide telephones for it’s employees in their cubicles his desk had been a bare stretch of laminated wood with an empty wooden inbox for any incoming mail at the end..
He made certain that every project he was involved with was complete and in fact finished several early so no one would be waiting for him to return.
The desk was no longer clear. Piled high were reports and filed. The inbox was not only filled but it was clear the number of the papers tipped over at some point, was lifted out and split into piles and then the inbox filled again. It looked like this happened more than once. Stan thought this was quite a feat considering that most communication was done electronically these days.
He looked over his desk and then looked around at the other offices.
There had been people around him before. He saw them moving about doing their own work. He also knew they saw him enter the office and move to his desk. He said hello to a frew of them and they returned the greetings. Now he turned and looked around. It was a ghost town. Not a single person was in sight.
It didn’t take a genius to see what happened.
He took a deep breath and set his messenger bag beside the desk. He pushed a few papers away so that he could find a spot for his coffee mug. She slipped off his sports coat and rolled up his sleeves.
‘The last time,’ he thought as he began to look into the files, mail and reports trying to find some order to the chaos. This week away he secured a place for himself elsewhere. He was leaving. There was only one more month to get through and then he was gone. He just needed to get through the month.
AS he worked, Stan was aware of the office coming back to life around him. He heard the sound of keys and the movement of chairs as people got down to work. No one came near him or his overburdened desk. He wasn’t surprised.
As he worked he could identify where the projects came from. He could, if he wanted, trace every piece of paper on his desk. He smiled and wondered if they realized he would also be changing the names on things. If he was going to do the work, he was going to get the credit. He knew some of them didn;’t realize that. It hadn’t actually registered that when they were assigned work there was the name of the person submitting it stamped on the report or file for tracking purposes. All of them were scanned in electronically and when it came time for reviews the files were pulled and the name listed on the completion was the one who got the credit. Most of those in the office had been her less than six months and learned in their first few weeks to slip things onto his desk if they didn’t want to bother with them. He would make sure the project was complete.
The reviews would be coming up at the end of the month and he expected several would have quite a rude awakening. ‘Especially when I hand in my resignation.’ The thought put a smile on his face as he moved from the physical files to the electronic ones.
Ten til Midnight 