The events in this story are inspired by too many years working in offices and many of these events actually took place. I would also like to pay homage to Czech writer Katerina Sidonova whose story "A Day in the Half-life of Class 4D" provided the inspiration for the writing style. Her story is part of a collection entitled "Povidky Short Stories by Czech Women" Edited by Nancy Hawker.
Remember back in the day, when attending school was almost a contact sport? If it weren’t for the extra grey hairs, the extra added pounds and the extra lines and wrinkles – on them mind you, not me – you would swear that this place was junior high all over again. The women here have long since left the trappings of being a teenager behind, well wait now there is Kelly after all, but each and every one of them is the still the same girl. Attitudes and jealousies, pettiness and haughtiness haven’t diminished with age but have grown into monstrous caricatures of the whiny, nasty and downright horrible bitches-in-training they used to be. The lines etched in girl power have been drawn on both their faces and on the office floor and the skank with the best supporting cast wins.
It’s Monday morning and the girls have just arrived to their territorial desks in cubical land; the outgrowth of the old lockers in the hallway. There’s Jo and her ever present posse of the cool girls who walk around with their noses in the air and wearing their gang colours. Their oversized donut-induced butts are secured by duct tape-strength black pants because they conveniently hide the dirt and are supposed to make you look slimmer. Only these women are oblivious to the fact that pants cannot perform miracles. Each woman wears a short black jacket that flares out slightly at the hips, giving the impression of wide-assed authority. Their one hint of individuality comes in the limited choices of permissible accessories as dictated by the leader.
Jo favours a large pashmina shawl (it’s not real but she thinks no one knows) in a hideous hot pink that does a very poor job of concealing her girth. Debbie D., oh wait that’s Deborah D. to you and me, adorns herself with a layer of gold chains that are forever getting caught in her lanyard with the office pass. Kim, not Kimberly or Kimmy just Kim, always has her jacket open to reveal the extensive wardrobe of too-tight turtleneck sweaters that restrain her turkey wattle chin(s) but fail to hide the three spare tires around her middle. Corrie always wears her trade-mark earrings that change according to the seasons and the holidays. She does not like wearing other jewelry and always has her telephone on forward to avoid talking on it, avoiding earring removal.
Finally, there are the fric and frac twins Stephie and Kelly. Stephie, and everyone can call her that, loves her hideous costume rings. Each one comes with a story and they look like it took a lot of quarters to get them out of the gumball machine. As for Kelly, poor Kelly, she refuses to believe that 1990 ever happened and arrives with her hair teased out beyond decency and revels in her boardroom-battle shoulder pads. Not to worry though; as far as Jo is concerned these girls have earned the right to dictate what is cool and in. By the way, brooches, sleek hairdos, brownish lipsticks and flounced skirts are not allowed without express written consent and a group meeting.
Amanda leans back in her chair and drains her can of pop that she has for breakfast each morning. It will be the first of five that she will drink that day and several will remind her about the calories, even in diet drinks. As you have probably guessed she is not part of Jo’s group, but she does belong to Erica’s band of cliquey misfit warriors. These babes are the supposed bad girls who break all the rules and refuse to join in which makes them ultra cool. Truth is that they are the same dull suburbanites living out their childhood fantasies that never came to fruition. Erica sings karaoke every Friday night at the bar near her home and she only sings one song that she hopes will make her famous. But I don’t know many recording industry people that hang out at Charlie’s Bar.
Amanda still believes Jon Bon Jovi is waiting patiently to discover her feminine charms and nail her. That’s after he rolls her in flour to find the wet spot according to Jo. Amanda’s partners in crime include Heather who never wears makeup, dresses in the same shabby clothes and lives for casual Friday when she can wear her twenty year old jeans. She still fits into them because she never eats but smokes like a fiend. Debbie, and this Debbie is Debbie to one and all, dreams of being over-powered by some bad boy poet or biker dude, because she really lives with four kids and an accountant husband who is about as exciting as a sack of wet shit. Finally, Shelley with an e if you please, is the tree-hugger activist, mountain biker and granola cruncher about whom it is rumoured, is really a man trapped in a woman’s body.
The rest of the office staff merely watch these women and their antics from a distance, studying how these rival gangs interact. Whether they are scent marking their territory with potpourri or cackling away in a gaggle exclusive to their members, their dynamics are the highlights of the week. Today turns out to be nothing special since Mondays are usually reserved for judgmental conversations of who did what on the weekend and whose adventures outdid the others. It’s amazing how they manage to make grocery shopping, kid’s birthday parties, dutiful marital sexual obligations, and in bed by ten o’clock seem the high points of the social scene. Other than the latest in the appliance wars, who has the stainless steel and who is lagging behind, today is the calm before the estrogen storm.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays generally witness the latest round of gang warfare as looks are exchanged, lines are drawn (some even deeper than the lines on their faces) and snotty whisperings fill the air. The tension builds steadily as the girls plan for the mother of all assaults, otherwise known to the rest of us as the Thursday Thrashing. That’s because cubical land has become a battleground of weary workers panicking over the latest rumours of overtime, layoffs, and new computer terminals or whatever other coveted items have arrived this week. Last month there was the new stapler scramble and to this day Shelley still bears the scars on her right arm thanks to the nasty nail attack of Jo during the melee. The boss simply tossed one on the desk and said told the girls to work it out among themselves, because he’s an old pervert and this is the closest he will ever get to a cat fight.
Thursday morning the claws are being sharpened for the turn of events, but rather than listening to me, why not eavesdrop for yourself? Just remind yourself from time to time that this is not the third floor locker room. Rather, it is 8:10 a.m. in office land. Jo arrives to find her precious pen is missing and her notepad is not in its usual place.
“Good morning girls, how is everyone today?” Jo lumbers in with three large handbags.
“Hi Jo, what’s up?” Debbie (Deborah) D. begins the roll call.
“Hey Jo Jo! Long time no see!” Kim sips her triple mocha something-or-other.
“Morning Jo, good things it’s s.h.i.t. day.” Corrie’s silly and cute way to sound racy.
“Yeah, so happy it’s Thursday!” Kelly is half-listening to her voicemails.
“Oh it’s not Friday yet? I so thought it was Friday. I declare that it’s Friday; let’s go tell the boss. Think he’ll go for it?” Jo frowns as she scans her desk.
“He might if we all offered to take him out to the Wild Pig and get him drunk.” Stephie forces her bad girl laugh and claps her hands twice.
“Hey! What the hell happened to my pen and notepad? My pen is missing and the notepad has been moved!” Jo pouts and bites her lower lip.
“What’s that Jo?” Kim’s caffeine is kicking in.
“Who would do such a thing? Honestly you have to lock everything up around here. Remember what happened to Julie last year?” Corrie pipes up.
“Julie?” Kim calls out in between sips.
“Yes, you remember Julie who sat where Susan sits now? The little blonde girl that left to go to Diamond Executives?” Debbie D. sets her straight.
“Oh, her! She was such a scatterbrain!” Finally Kelly has finished touching up her lipstick and graces us with her presence.
‘Yeah, but remember when she came back from lunch and her purse had been ransacked? I’ll be you it was Lloyd; he’s the lunch thief you know.” Corrie says accusingly in that ‘I watch the law shows you know’ tone.
“Come on girls, where is my pen? I can’t possibly work without my pen. My whole day will be ruined if I don’t find my pen!” Jo is gesticulating wildly with her candy pink nail polish decorated hands.
Now as to the significance of this pen, it’s nothing special. But it is in Jo’s mind and it has a special lime green outer covering that Jo adores. The same lime green of those rubber bracelets she wore eons ago.
“I know. I’ll bet you I know who took it!” Jo yells out.
“Who Jo Jo?” Kim drains the last of her coffee.
“Well, I’ll just bet you that our Erica took it!” Jo stresses Erica’s name.
“Yeah, that’s just like her.” Kelly scans her emails.
By this time in the week, Amanda’s patience has run its course. “Yeah right, Erica is just pining for a pen like that. Your personal vibrator.”
“Oh Amanda, really!” Jo can’t stand the thought of only a thin cubicle wall separating the two of them.
“What’s up with you? Someone pee in your latte?” Amanda tosses her pop can into the recycle bin by her wastebasket.
“Do you not know that my pen is no mere pen, but I received it for being the most productive in the office last year? You’re just jealous that it wasn’t you.” Jo needs every little accolade she can get.
“Hey, maybe Amanda has your pen? I’ll just bet you she took it to piss you off!” Debbie D. is eating her lunch already.
“Yeah right, like I would touch anything on her skanky desk. Did you like look in your drawer?”
Amanda is not too crazy about being Jo’s cubical mate, but the boss refused her request to move.
“It’s not in my drawer. I put it in my special pencil holder every night before I leave and now it’s not there.” Jo’s getting hysterical now.
“What special pencil holder? You mean you shove it up your ass?” Erica chimes in.
“No way! It would get lost up there!” Heather insists.
“Come on girls, help me find my pen. I can’t work until I find my pen.” Jo is starting to cry.
“Oh my pen, oh my pen. So just get another one and deal already!” Shelley groans in disgust.
“Looks like someone forgot their Midol today.” Debbie, Debbie to everyone hoots.
“Nobody here would take your pen. Maybe one of the cleaners took it.” Corrie’s rule of thumb is always to blame the cleaning staff.
“Why do you always blame the cleaners?” Amanda is standing, peering over the divider.
“Come on where is my pen?” Jo flings open her drawers and slams them shut.
“I have had it up to hear about you and your pen! Get a grip and get another pen!” Erica is fighting with her stapler.
“No, you don’t understand that pen is very special. Besides do I go and take something of yours? No I don’t.” Jo is using her mother tone again; just too bad her kids have long since tuned it out.
“Ohmigod what a bitch! She’s going to start crying any moment now!” Heather lets her phone go to voicemail.
Now up to this point the girls merely flung their verbal arrows over the fortress tops of their cubicals for they were so sure of their accurate aim at their intended targets. Erica made the fist move that it was time to rumble.
Erica steps out from her cubicle, unfolding her five feet ten inch frame dressed from head to toe in her turquoise pant suit that is a shadow of its former itself. Her heavy thuds emanate from her thick soled no-nonsense black shoes – due to her bunion operation – and she stomps over to Jo’s desk. Taking one look at Jo’s girly-girl décor desk with its plush stuffed animals, each a gift from one of the gang, cutesy pink flamingo string of lights and collection of ‘you go girl’, ‘bestest friend’ and ‘yummy mummy’ plaques, Erica sneers at the juvenile display. But would you expect anything else from a woman that still makes little hearts above her letter i’s and ends her voicemails with ‘You thought you reached Jo, but looks like she is missing in action’?
“Nobody here has your pen. If you would be smart and lock it in your desk before you leave we wouldn’t have to go through this again.” Erica’s deep voice matches her tall body to perfection.
“I shouldn’t have to lock up my things. This is my desk,” Jo slams her little fist to emphasize the point but it’s more for her benefit than any of the others, “and it is my personal sacred space.”
“Common sense dictates that you lock up your things so they don’t wander away.” Amanda assumes her usual position at Erica’s right arm as the second in command.
“Maybe we wouldn’t have to if you cows would keep your filthy paws off of others’ things.” Kelly never could get her metaphors straight.
“Who are you calling a cow?” Shelley heads into the battle.
“Hey if the udders that fall all the way to the floor fit...” Stephie laughs.
“You should talk, you’re so saggy that you have to tie your boobs in a knot and throw them over your shoulder.” Thanks, Erica but we don’t need to see that.
Debbie, Erica’s Debbie, just loved stirring up manure. “Hey who needs your old pen after you scratched yourself with it? Why not go for the gold and take this instead?” Reaching out Debbie snatches at the string of pink flamingos and yanks them the way you would yank your girlfriend’s diary out of her hands then throw it to your next girlfriend.
“Give those back bitch!” Jo’s little girl wailings grow more shrill with each utterance and the tears are flowing, the nose is running.
“We need to put these things out of their misery.” Shelley marches over to the nearest garbage can and tosses them in. “Or better yet put us out of our misery of having to look at those things.”
“You bitch! I’m going to…” Corrie’s dangling pink heart earrings jostle against her puffy cheeked face as she runs over to Shelley’s desk. “I’m going to get rid of this piece of shit right now and remove the stink.” Corrie grabs the margarine tub-sized potpourri from Shelley’s desk, spilling dried leaves all over the carpet.
“Now look what you’ve done, stupid clumsy bitch. You pick that up.” Amanda charges over to confront Corrie.
“And if I don’t?” Corrie tosses potpourri like confetti.
“Then I’ll rip those stupid earrings out of your pointy ears.” Amanda wasn’t incorrect in that assessment; in fact that’s why Corrie always wore her hair long since her ears really did look like an elf’s.
“You just try it and I’ll use these as oversized confetti.” Kelly opens Amanda’s desk and with her ever faithful bestest friend Stephie, tosses the entire contents of the box of super-absorbency tampons in the air; raining down on the nearest cubicles.
“You give those back. I need those.” Amanda yells.
“Yeah, you must be on the rag again. Looks like you need at least four of these at a time fat-ass!” Kim giggles.
“Oh yeah, well at least I don’t need to keep this big bottle of spray on my desk to cover up my odour.” Amanda seizes Kim’s can of freshener to spray copious amounts of floral crap scent that soon filled the air. Not to be outdone, Kim tears Erica’s purse from the back of the chair, dumps the contents, locates the stinky patchouli perfume and sprays Erica’s chair with it.
“Ladies, ladies, please. What is going on out here? What is so important that you have to raise such a ruckus? How would you feel if you were trying to talk on the phone with all of this noise in the background? It wouldn’t be very nice.” The boss looks like those teachers you can completely control.
“It’s not our fault someone can’t respect other peoples things.” Jo fiddles with her pink flamingos, their colour matching that of her eyes and nose.
“For the last freakin’ time, no one took your stupid pen. And no one would even want to touch your dildo anyways.” Erica has a way of being crude and funny at the same time.
“Now ladies, I am sure we can work this out like adults.” He sounds more and more like a lame teacher every minute as he retreats to his office and closes the door.
“We could if we actually had some mature people here unlike the cranky-assed skanks over here.” Debbie (Deborah) D. has the squeakiest little girly voice you ever heard.
“Cranky-assed skanks, cranky-assed skanks. Why don’t you, like, grow up already?” Shelley did an incredible impersonation of Debbie D., and I’d bet in a contest, Debbie D. would come in second.
“Make me.” Debbie D. shrieks.
“Make us.” Kim emphasizes the ‘us’ with a menacing tone.
And just like that, the battle exploded. . Corrie handed Jo a tissue, then shoved at Heather who started coughing violently thanks to her cancer sticks. Heather shoved back and a melee ensued with much hair pulling and Amanda almost ripped the shoulder pads out of Kelly’s 80’s style jacket. Finally, the years and pounds caught up with them; they stood snorting and wheezing as mascara collected in the lines around their eyes and the rank smell of middle-age sweat and panty liners competed with the still lingering scents from earlier.
“This is not over, not by a long shot. I can’t work without my pen and I might just have to go home.” Jo strung her pink flamingos back up.
Stephie put her arm around Jo. Debbie and Kim shook their heads and traded as least a dozen ‘as-ifs” as they picked up their coffee mugs that both read ‘Number One Bitch’ to head for the break room. Corrie went from cubicle to cubicle assuring her gang that they would go out for salads at lunch at that new place up the street. Kelly furtively snuck into her drawer the three tampons that had landed on her desk as she was due any day. In fact, they all were since they had worked together for so long and synchronized as one festering pool of hormones.
Erica muttered while she retreated back to her cubicle, Amanda opened up her second can of pop. Heather began collecting up the tampons from her area for Amanda, and then took her lighter and cigarettes out for a smoke-break with Shelley following her even though she didn’t smoke. Debbie D. sat down with a huge groan (or was that the chair?) and the office continued on without so much as a blink from any of us.
Friday morning and the usual donuts arrive; this week it was Erica’s turn. As the girls frantically rummage through the boxes, a fierce chocolate-covered commodity war threatens to break out until Kim opens another box filled with just that kind. Jamming donuts into their mouths, they complain it is so hard to lose weight and compare the impending weekend treks to the home and garden centres. Amanda starts her customary licking the icing off the donuts.
“That is so disgusting. Why can’t you eat like a human being you pig?” Jo shuddered at her cubicle mate’s habits.
“Mummph, mummph, mummph, galumph.” Amanda spewed bits of donut out as she talked.
Translation: This is not over by a long shot bitch and just you wait until Monday when the new photocopier arrives.
No comments:
Post a Comment