Post by eldritchhat on May 28, 2016 21:06:11 GMT -6
Originally posted on Too Spooky, decided to share it here as well.
Back when I worked in an office, the one where I got my injury, I had a surprisingly close relationship with one of my bosses. Some of my fellow office jockeys resented me for this, and looking back, I can’t really blame them. For the first few months after I began working there, I would sit at this little plastic table for lunch, the kind with the metal legs and frame, and talk shit about our manager at the time. It had been a ritual at the time, a completely natural, if unconventional, way to relieve stress without some worn rubber ball.
I mean, this guy must have been in his sixties, ‘cause he would ramble around in the office, always wearing these crimson suspenders over a diminutive, wiry frame. He rubbed his hands like a raccoon, and he fidgeted and shouted if he didn’t get his way. Of course, I barely knew my coworkers names, and I shared very few interests with them, besides poking fun at a slightly-better-off pencil pusher. It was something of a pointless exercise to try and get to know each other, as we were all technically private contractors who could be disposed of at any moment. It was a revolving door, and for some reason, I was one of the slowest going through it. Even my hardass boss (who probably didn’t actually deserve it) was phased out quietly and overnight.
Our new boss was younger than any of my coworkers and I, and you could tell that by his cheery, congenial, and not yet crushed under the weight of the corporate system attitude. He was the poster boy of the American Dream, and it’s fair to say, from the first moment I saw him, I hated him.
For a while, we all kept up the old shtick, which wasn’t very hard. The kid looked like he had stolen one of his grandpa’s business suits, the kind that were beige and hung loose on anyone without a pot gut. He even wore a cheesy tie plastered with kittens to complete his anachronistic look. If you ever let your guard down, he would sidle up and watch over your shoulder, just wearing a big, goofy grin until he finally said ‘howdy!’
I don’t think he was intentionally taking the big brother approach here. I think, to some extent, that he was legitimately trying to befriend us, but it only increased our loathing. Eventually, it got to the point where we drastically cut down our sessions of mockery. Even when he did hear insults tossed his way, his smile would only slightly falter, and whoever had pitched it would be out of the office after the weekend came. This guy had that kinda power, and I heard that once, when someone turned around and saw him, they just quit on the spot out of fear of the repercussions that might follow.
At this point, I had been working here the longest of anyone on our floor, so I wasn’t surprised when he called me into his office one day. I tried to tell myself that I was always prepared to lose my job, though, never by the exit strategy that actually occurred. However, when I found my boss sitting at his desk with a bowl of clam chowder, a glass of fresh made lemonade, and a tinfoil-wrapped potato, my jaw almost clanged against the linoleum floor. His room was in complete contrast to any other I had seen in the whole building. It was only on the second floor, yet he sat in a huge leather armchair, skimming through some moth-bitten book off the gigantic bookshelf installed into the righthand side of his room.
He was wearing a bib, tucked neatly into his undershirt, and when he saw me enter, his face lit up. Rushing around, he pulled a chair to the opposite side of his desk and motioned for me to sit there. In front of the chair was a piece of ornamental china, a square of red cloth, and some very expensive-looking silverware.
“So,” he said, as I sat down, “What are you having?” He looked over to the brown paper bag I had brought for lunch. I picked it up and dumped the contents onto the plate, and, in an instant, the vibrant blue of the china seemed to have dulled. There it all was, a piece of half-eaten bologna with American cheese on white bread, accompanied with an apple as soft as a baby’s ass and thermos half-full of lukewarm coffee. Still, he took it in stride and carried on with small talk. “How are you liking it here, Jenny?” He asked, like I was the new guy.
This carried on for about half of an hour, and then I returned to my cubicle. I was pretty sure I knew what, basically, had just happened, but he hadn’t made any advances, so I figured I could just ignore it. That was, until it happened again the next day, and every single day I was still employed there. At first, I felt pretty creeped out, having to eat every day with some asshole half my age, but as he started opening up to me, I got to know him pretty well.
For one, he was gay, that became quite apparent even before he out and out stated it. He didn’t have a lisp or anything like that, he spoke with a slightly southern, but otherwise normal accent. Yet, he carried himself with a certain gravitas, always walking with his chin up and hands tucked behind his back. Besides that, every single photo on his desk was of him, cheery as ever, with an arm around another guy. One even hinted at how he’d gotten the job, as he seemed to be holding hands at some sort of party with a rather large, aging man in a very expensive suit.
He had this weird quirk where, no matter what he ate for his main entrae, he would always have a fat baked potato. They were all huge, with at least one eye centered on their thick, brown skin. Of course, that wasn’t the weird thing, it had been how he would eat the potatoes. They were always devoid of any topping, just a naked and uncut hunk of starch. He would take the smaller end of it and stick it into his mouth, chomp down, and eat the rest like it was a coreless apple. He would always do this after he ate the whole of the entrae. “One moment,” he would say, and eat the whole thing in maybe a minute or two. Afterward, he excused himself, and politely thanked me for dining with him.
One time, however, after he’d eaten the potato, he asked me to stay a little bit longer. He told me a story about his time in the military, about the horrors he had experienced as a gay man. Apparently, while he had kept quiet about his sexuality, and done so sufficiently, a close friend of his had not. This friend, named john, was probably the greatest man he had ever known. In his words, “he could kill a man with his teeth, shuck a whole corn in under a second, and fought for his country like no man before ‘im. Yet, what ultimately did him in was a bunch of pansies too afraid to face him awake, just ‘cause who he slept around with.” Some of their fellow soldiers snuck into John’s bunk and smothered him in his sleep. He told me that John always said, if you ate one of those shit potatoes they were always served fast enough, no one could ever kill you. Ever since, he said, he’s been downing potatoes in the memory of old John.
I heard that story not long before my accident, and by then, I had taken a fondness to the little guy. I felt like I was his mentor, that I was keeping him innocent from the machine of America’s corporate system. However, my coworkers felt otherwise. They were convinced that I had become a spy for the ‘tiny tyrant,’ and ostracised me at every chance they could get. They would intentionally ‘forget’ to give me my mail, and I would often hear laughter disperse once I walked into a room. It only got worse as layoffs kept increasing. There was only a handful of people on our floor, and they would beam with rage every time I walked past.
One Monday, the day I had my accident, it was surprisingly quiet throughout the whole building. No one roamed from their cubicles, and since I hadn’t been assigned any work, I played flash games on my computer. At lunch break, I walked over to the door of my boss’s office, suspecting to have another average lunch. What I found, however, was a pigsty of a room.
I turned on the light and saw confetti splayed all over the ground, a wine stain on the carpet, and a crate of potatoes in front of the bookshelf. A few greeting cards were scattered across his desk, all wishing someone a “HAPPY 70th!” Out of the corner of my eye I saw a piece of red fabric poking out of a ceiling panel. I decided that, since the janitor had apparently taken the day off, I would do something nice and try to clean it up a little bit.
I pulled the bookshelf ladder over to the upper righthand corner of the room and climbed up to the top. I started pulling on the little piece, revealing it as a tight little hole that I stuck my finger in to get a better grip. Like the clumsy doof I am, I began to lean back to pull the thing out. After getting out about an inch, the thing refused to budge, but I was determined to deal with nuisance before it drove me insane. I climbed up on the top rung and gripped the cloth furiously. Finally, as I heard the door open a creek, I put my hands on the panel and began moving it aside. It was surprisingly heavy, and when I’d moved it an inch or two back, I saw a large, brown lump tumble out.
I’ve never really put together what happened then, but I heard a scream as the ladder began to waddle. I believe it was I who screamed, but next thing I know I’m careening right through the second floor window. I only got a second to feel the impact of the glass and see the concrete of the ground below. When I woke up, I was stuck in a hospital bed, surrounded by curtains and other fellows coated with bandages.
And that, my friend, is how I lost my ability to walk without a cane.
Back when I worked in an office, the one where I got my injury, I had a surprisingly close relationship with one of my bosses. Some of my fellow office jockeys resented me for this, and looking back, I can’t really blame them. For the first few months after I began working there, I would sit at this little plastic table for lunch, the kind with the metal legs and frame, and talk shit about our manager at the time. It had been a ritual at the time, a completely natural, if unconventional, way to relieve stress without some worn rubber ball.
I mean, this guy must have been in his sixties, ‘cause he would ramble around in the office, always wearing these crimson suspenders over a diminutive, wiry frame. He rubbed his hands like a raccoon, and he fidgeted and shouted if he didn’t get his way. Of course, I barely knew my coworkers names, and I shared very few interests with them, besides poking fun at a slightly-better-off pencil pusher. It was something of a pointless exercise to try and get to know each other, as we were all technically private contractors who could be disposed of at any moment. It was a revolving door, and for some reason, I was one of the slowest going through it. Even my hardass boss (who probably didn’t actually deserve it) was phased out quietly and overnight.
Our new boss was younger than any of my coworkers and I, and you could tell that by his cheery, congenial, and not yet crushed under the weight of the corporate system attitude. He was the poster boy of the American Dream, and it’s fair to say, from the first moment I saw him, I hated him.
For a while, we all kept up the old shtick, which wasn’t very hard. The kid looked like he had stolen one of his grandpa’s business suits, the kind that were beige and hung loose on anyone without a pot gut. He even wore a cheesy tie plastered with kittens to complete his anachronistic look. If you ever let your guard down, he would sidle up and watch over your shoulder, just wearing a big, goofy grin until he finally said ‘howdy!’
I don’t think he was intentionally taking the big brother approach here. I think, to some extent, that he was legitimately trying to befriend us, but it only increased our loathing. Eventually, it got to the point where we drastically cut down our sessions of mockery. Even when he did hear insults tossed his way, his smile would only slightly falter, and whoever had pitched it would be out of the office after the weekend came. This guy had that kinda power, and I heard that once, when someone turned around and saw him, they just quit on the spot out of fear of the repercussions that might follow.
At this point, I had been working here the longest of anyone on our floor, so I wasn’t surprised when he called me into his office one day. I tried to tell myself that I was always prepared to lose my job, though, never by the exit strategy that actually occurred. However, when I found my boss sitting at his desk with a bowl of clam chowder, a glass of fresh made lemonade, and a tinfoil-wrapped potato, my jaw almost clanged against the linoleum floor. His room was in complete contrast to any other I had seen in the whole building. It was only on the second floor, yet he sat in a huge leather armchair, skimming through some moth-bitten book off the gigantic bookshelf installed into the righthand side of his room.
He was wearing a bib, tucked neatly into his undershirt, and when he saw me enter, his face lit up. Rushing around, he pulled a chair to the opposite side of his desk and motioned for me to sit there. In front of the chair was a piece of ornamental china, a square of red cloth, and some very expensive-looking silverware.
“So,” he said, as I sat down, “What are you having?” He looked over to the brown paper bag I had brought for lunch. I picked it up and dumped the contents onto the plate, and, in an instant, the vibrant blue of the china seemed to have dulled. There it all was, a piece of half-eaten bologna with American cheese on white bread, accompanied with an apple as soft as a baby’s ass and thermos half-full of lukewarm coffee. Still, he took it in stride and carried on with small talk. “How are you liking it here, Jenny?” He asked, like I was the new guy.
This carried on for about half of an hour, and then I returned to my cubicle. I was pretty sure I knew what, basically, had just happened, but he hadn’t made any advances, so I figured I could just ignore it. That was, until it happened again the next day, and every single day I was still employed there. At first, I felt pretty creeped out, having to eat every day with some asshole half my age, but as he started opening up to me, I got to know him pretty well.
For one, he was gay, that became quite apparent even before he out and out stated it. He didn’t have a lisp or anything like that, he spoke with a slightly southern, but otherwise normal accent. Yet, he carried himself with a certain gravitas, always walking with his chin up and hands tucked behind his back. Besides that, every single photo on his desk was of him, cheery as ever, with an arm around another guy. One even hinted at how he’d gotten the job, as he seemed to be holding hands at some sort of party with a rather large, aging man in a very expensive suit.
He had this weird quirk where, no matter what he ate for his main entrae, he would always have a fat baked potato. They were all huge, with at least one eye centered on their thick, brown skin. Of course, that wasn’t the weird thing, it had been how he would eat the potatoes. They were always devoid of any topping, just a naked and uncut hunk of starch. He would take the smaller end of it and stick it into his mouth, chomp down, and eat the rest like it was a coreless apple. He would always do this after he ate the whole of the entrae. “One moment,” he would say, and eat the whole thing in maybe a minute or two. Afterward, he excused himself, and politely thanked me for dining with him.
One time, however, after he’d eaten the potato, he asked me to stay a little bit longer. He told me a story about his time in the military, about the horrors he had experienced as a gay man. Apparently, while he had kept quiet about his sexuality, and done so sufficiently, a close friend of his had not. This friend, named john, was probably the greatest man he had ever known. In his words, “he could kill a man with his teeth, shuck a whole corn in under a second, and fought for his country like no man before ‘im. Yet, what ultimately did him in was a bunch of pansies too afraid to face him awake, just ‘cause who he slept around with.” Some of their fellow soldiers snuck into John’s bunk and smothered him in his sleep. He told me that John always said, if you ate one of those shit potatoes they were always served fast enough, no one could ever kill you. Ever since, he said, he’s been downing potatoes in the memory of old John.
I heard that story not long before my accident, and by then, I had taken a fondness to the little guy. I felt like I was his mentor, that I was keeping him innocent from the machine of America’s corporate system. However, my coworkers felt otherwise. They were convinced that I had become a spy for the ‘tiny tyrant,’ and ostracised me at every chance they could get. They would intentionally ‘forget’ to give me my mail, and I would often hear laughter disperse once I walked into a room. It only got worse as layoffs kept increasing. There was only a handful of people on our floor, and they would beam with rage every time I walked past.
One Monday, the day I had my accident, it was surprisingly quiet throughout the whole building. No one roamed from their cubicles, and since I hadn’t been assigned any work, I played flash games on my computer. At lunch break, I walked over to the door of my boss’s office, suspecting to have another average lunch. What I found, however, was a pigsty of a room.
I turned on the light and saw confetti splayed all over the ground, a wine stain on the carpet, and a crate of potatoes in front of the bookshelf. A few greeting cards were scattered across his desk, all wishing someone a “HAPPY 70th!” Out of the corner of my eye I saw a piece of red fabric poking out of a ceiling panel. I decided that, since the janitor had apparently taken the day off, I would do something nice and try to clean it up a little bit.
I pulled the bookshelf ladder over to the upper righthand corner of the room and climbed up to the top. I started pulling on the little piece, revealing it as a tight little hole that I stuck my finger in to get a better grip. Like the clumsy doof I am, I began to lean back to pull the thing out. After getting out about an inch, the thing refused to budge, but I was determined to deal with nuisance before it drove me insane. I climbed up on the top rung and gripped the cloth furiously. Finally, as I heard the door open a creek, I put my hands on the panel and began moving it aside. It was surprisingly heavy, and when I’d moved it an inch or two back, I saw a large, brown lump tumble out.
I’ve never really put together what happened then, but I heard a scream as the ladder began to waddle. I believe it was I who screamed, but next thing I know I’m careening right through the second floor window. I only got a second to feel the impact of the glass and see the concrete of the ground below. When I woke up, I was stuck in a hospital bed, surrounded by curtains and other fellows coated with bandages.
And that, my friend, is how I lost my ability to walk without a cane.
