It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the time I'd just gotten used to my office, it was the time I was losing my office. Mornings I would huddle over my black mother's milk and cry:
"Employer loves me,An office meant one thing: a door, which implied a hinge, which implied closure, which implied privacy. It inspired me sometimes to the point of uttering corporate buzzwords: "Metrics" I ticced, saying it every third word like someone suffering from a corporate Tourette syndrome.
this I know,
because this office
tells me so!"
The privacy was visual, not audial, and I sat next to someone who made Eliza Doolittle sound like Ella Fitzgerald. Like a super action figure, her body-made-for-sin would stun men (think Wonderwoman with her magic belt) before she slayed them with words. The perfect obverse of a phone sex operator, even earplugs could not din the cries of this banshee when something went wrong.
I was losing my office and going back to a roofless cube clochán because the guy at the top of the hierarchy eschewed hierarchy and wanted a flatter, more democratic organization on the ground if not on the org chart. He'd also read in a management book that workers were more productive if there was more light, so all offices next to windows were torn down, as well as those which lacked a view, and I lived in hope that some day beer-drinking would be found a productivity aid.
My office functioned as a womb. Hot coffee attended me, her hot breath on my face just before I drank. I usually picked up a cinamon roll from the cafeteria, lacivious with frosting. On special days I'd buy Kellogg's Corn Pops, with its single-serving cylindrical package, and pour the milk in and eat it sans spoon. A picture of my wife and children sat to the left of the computer screen. Earphones were handy for symphonic inspiration while I "added value", as the term went, by creating print advertisements which would hopefully induce more people to buy more product.
Often I'd have to go to meetings at Jason's office where after fifteen minutes his screen-saver of family vacation photos kicked on. In other settings interest in that would quickly flag, but here it became very distracting. Jason's glasses were so crisp and new-fashioned that I'd alternate between eyeing the glasses holding in his bald dome and his children playing with the dog.
Once I was asked to give a presentation on the fall campaign, something I hadn't fleshed out yet, and while groping for words Stan said, "Don't stop."
I had the punchline ready.
"That's what she said!"