At first, I worked like a plow horse. I stayed late. I volunteered for extra assignments. Although unaccustomed to getting up early, battling traffic, and fretting over proper business attire, I was happy to have a job.
By week six, my fatigue had resolved, but everyday ended with a headache. All day, I squinted at the computer. The work aggravated my eyes. Not only did I need a screen shield from the computer glare and overhead florescent lights, I also called for an appointment for glasses.
Month three, my nasal passages ran like a sewer. I sneezed, wheezed, coughed, and spewed all day. “It’s normal,” my manager said, assuring me I would soon adjust to the poorly ventilated building.
During week ten, my scalp started to itch. I couldn’t stop scratching. I suspected lice, contracted from the kids, but the diagnosis was severe dandruff from stress. The doctor prescribed tar shampoo and a metal comb.
By the fourth month, I had some relief. For a few days, I actually felt well. Then, one morning, I awoke with a pain between my atlas and armpit. I couldn’t raise my arm above my elbow. A purse strap was unbearable. Sleep was only possible with a heating pad and pillow to hoist my torso. In short, I was crippled. I took high doses of anti-inflammatory drugs and made appointments to see a physical therapist, acupuncturist, and spiritual advisor.
Twenty-four weeks on the job, fatigue, stuffy head, neck tension, and dandruff were behind me. However, for a split second every quarter-hour, I gasped for air. I assumed it was anxiety over a deadline, but the deadline passed, and the breathlessness did not. Eventually, this malady simply subsided, and I inhaled at a normal rate.
In my seventh month, I was really managing. A paycheck came reliably every two weeks. Medical benefits were secure. The children had grown accustomed to afternoons without me. In fact, the days were fine. It was the nights that were untenable. Nightmares!
As one ailment resolved itself, it was replaced by another, more ominous than the predecessor. Hydra had reared her ugly heads, and they were all inside my own.
I didn’t have to look far for the cause. No doubt, the building was designed by a sadist. The ceilings were low and the few window slits reserved for a dozen executives. The interior walls, industrial carpeting, desks and file cabinets were uniformly battleship gray. Privacy was a ludicrous concept in the tiny cubicles that served as offices. Taps, buzzes, grinds, hums, burps, nail clippers, coughs, curses, and conversations dispersed into the open space above us. Sadly, even filled with human noise, the atmosphere was profoundly lifeless.
Our building, located in a premiere industrial park, had paved over the premiere agricultural acreage that had once thrived with orchards. Traveling a few blocks in any direction led to four identical mini-shopping centers, each with a grocery store, a restaurant of ethnic cuisine, an athletic shoe store, and a nail salon.
Inside my half-portion of cubicle, I tried beautification. I stuck my children’s drawings and a poem by William Blake on the carpet-like wall. Other employees also exhibited their personal touches, recalling who they were and informing everyone else who they might be if they didn’t have to work at the Data Center. Our efforts reminiscent of rituals in which the dead are buried with their prized possessions.
In my ninth month, I was pleased to report all signs of physical ailments had eased and nightmares ceased. I had successfully joined the American workforce.
My next job was more convenient. I didn’t have to drive on freeways or worry about what to wear. No one complained if I left early. If the kids were sick, I could lay them on a pallet on the office floor. Although I was not paid much, I preferred being close to home.
When a lawsuit forced the company to cut back staff, I received a pink slip, indicating income and health insurance were now terminated. Pointlessly, I remained in my office, tidying, emptying, dusting, packing. Most of all, I was waiting for a reversal of fortune. By closing time, the position of telemarketer had been rejected by six other employees. I was next in line.
Whatever the job at hand, I exceeded expectations. Management found me cheerful and capable. During the second round of layoffs, the new Mr. President informed me he had personally saved my job.
“Personally,” he emphasized.
Now, it was understood I owed him. Payback came a week later when he asked if I had time to help him pick out a suit at Nordstrom’s Semi-Annual Men’s Sale.
“I never make the right decisions when it comes to clothes,” he smiled sheepishly. “My wife always chose them for me.” He was in the middle of a divorce.
I found the courage to be blunt. I did not hold back. Shopping for men’s clothes was not in my job description. I had children to attend to after work. I couldn’t spare the time. In the next round of layoffs, I expected to lose my job. As it turned out, Mr. President lost his.
At the new job, there were just two of us. “My one and only” was how Herr Director described me to his astrologer. Our office was a renovated Victorian storefront a few blocks east of San Francisco Bay. We worked for a non-profit that did good work. Beware! The last time I was hired by a non-profit (an organization like David v. Goliath that battled nuclear arms), I was tyrannized and belittled by my celebrated humanitarian boss.
In the new job, Herr Director used au courant terms like “non-hierarchical” and “empowerment” to let me and everyone else know he was not really a boss. He was a facilitator, guide, expediter, and friend. Although I did ninety percent of the work, whenever it was successful, he took the credit, and with his smooth, sententious manners, made us all feel gloriously connected to the process. His favorite pastime was spouting ideas. They were as prolific and ephemeral as gas and erupted every time he stopped by the office on his way out for a latte.
The only time his casual, slovenly style (rooted as much in numerology as policy reform) reversed dramatically was the day before our monthly board meeting. Then, he was inspired to rush around, preparing reports, his mood altering from carefree to cruel.
He did work hard at pleasing the board. He briefed them on the positive trends of the organization, convinced them to volunteer for the tasks of his job, and adroitly redirected the conversation to his latest getaway plans with a sweetheart. The board (all men) loved him. They wished they had jobs that were open-ended and girlfriends instead of wives.
When I first encountered Herr Director, he had a small grant. I needed a job, and he needed a feasibility report. He hired me to write it. After he got a bigger grant, he took me on as a part-time employee with flexible hours and a flexible work plan. Naturally, I appreciated the flexibility, short hours, and casual dress code. While I was initially relieved there was no boss breathing down my collar, I soon realized there was no boss. Period.
My job title was project manager. Basically, I was hired to wipe up Herr Director’s messes, shepherd broken agreements and abandoned clients, and in case he was working out at the Y, perform reconstructive surgery. Since the single organizational project was complex, I deemed it prudent to handle all the particulars myself, assigning a few remedial tasks to Herr Director.
He was perfectly receptive to the arrangement. His astrologer told him I wouldn’t make trouble as long as he remembered to thank me. Everyday, he called in with heartfelt thanks and once a month, brought me flowers.
Finally, I exploded. I said we should re-evaluate the workload. He agreed. I should be paid on time. He agreed. I should get a bonus for the half-million dollar grant I successfully pursued. He agreed. But after all the harmonious agreeing, nothing changed. Workload, pay schedule, bonus, the arrangement remained the same.
After Herr Director rented a house at the beach, it became inconvenient for him to commute. When he did turn in a rare guest appearance, it was either to recount woman troubles or spiritual progress with Herr Guru. I rarely discussed personal matters, and Herr Director rarely discussed work. According to him, the guru’s teachings must have taken hold, for the project was shaping up nicely.
After Herr Director exhausted his treasure trove of spiritual anecdotes, he engaged our office mates in chitchat, made a couple of phone calls, followed by a leisurely meal and long walk. Although I prepared him a list of simpleton assignments, he didn’t do them. Not because he couldn’t but because he preferred not to. Like a philandering husband, he was busy having fun while the wife watched the kids.
Fun, he pursued like a zealot. To him, we were co-conspirators in his good times. I got the opportunity to work, and he got the opportunity to pay himself for goofing around. He was the prodigal, gifted rascal, and I was the anxious caretaker. He was the relaxed husband, I the overworked wife. I was the project manager, and he was the director, out to lunch.
I had technical skills plus strong letters of recommendation. It was not difficult to find a new job where duties were the same and staff eerily familiar. Like the old job, a trans-sexual managed customer relations. The chief technician wore shirts with revolutionary slogans. The chief-of-sales brought in donuts on Monday and organized games of Frisbee tag on Friday. The petite women who ruled the design department at the new company were physically identical to the old: pony tails, oversized glasses, starched blouses. The shipping clerk was a skinny blond with a shag haircut, popcorn muscles, cutoffs, and Van Halen decals on his truck. Doppelganger to the owner of the former company, the new one was a handsome foreigner who wore custom-made silk suits and oversaw operations like the province his family owned in his Third World country of origin.
In fact, the new job was a phantom of the old. Everyday, I got up, dressed in the same consignment-shop clothes, packed the same lunches for the kids, drove to a job identical to what I used to do, and sat at a desk with the same plastic desk caddie.
I weighed coincidence with probability. Either, I had died in a car accident and been reincarnated as an office worker. Or if not dead, I might be functional but insane. Or perhaps, I was trapped in a warp where everything blended into a simultaneous time-space continuum.
My miserable mind was helpless, but my body knew what to do. I contracted serial maladies. I caught viruses. I was susceptible to allergies. I fell down the stairs and hurt my back. I was on official leave. When leave ended, I was officially laid off.
The day I received my final notice, I became whole again. Robust and fit. There was no end of wonderful things to do before the unemployment checks ended and I began looking for another job.