It’s Monday and we’re in one of the many conference rooms usually reserved for meetings with teams of clients or auditors. It’s a big airy space with windows on two sides facing the city and a large, curvy table in the exact centre. The manufacturers claim the irregular design is more inclusive than the standard rectangle, which creates distance, but less confrontational than the circle where everyone faces each other. I think it’s total bollocks. A table is a table — you sit, you talk. The only design involved is the deliberate engineering of a price increase on what will always be a piece of fake wood with a several shiny metal legs.
Seated beside me at the organ slab are Hershey, a tranche of suits and Liam. Although he’s in HR the Bank believes in wide induction programmes so staff understand every facet of the business. The point of today’s discussion is a proposed investment. (No need to bore you with the details, it adds nothing to the narrative.) It’s being delivered by some nameless new guy I’ve never met before. I just hope one of his colleagues has explained Hershey’s childish idiosyncrasies or there’ll be trouble ahead.
Hershey is already utterly uninterested and makes no effort to hide it, spending more time on his flashy phone and picking his teeth than looking at the projection screen. That and smiling broadly at me. It’s utterly rude, but the presenter is just bending over and taking the insult straight up the arse. This is what I hate most. Since the dawn of man there have been twats in the world and there will continue to be even when the sun burns out in several billions of years, but it doesn’t mean you have to accept it when someone treats you like shit.
After about fifteen minutes Hershey exceeds his boredom threshold and makes it entirely obvious. First he drops his phone onto the table from about a foot high. It makes a heavy clunk that carries to every corner of the room. Next he spins around in his chair, first one way, then the other. The presenter carries on regardless, a hint of pink on his cheeks. Hershey stops spinning, stares pointedly at the guy, listens to the monotone for another half-minute and plays the final card. He leans over the right side of his chair and mimes pulling a lever.
Oh shit, I think. Clearly the new guy has no idea what was going on.
Neither does Liam, who looks at me in puzzlement. I shake my head at him before he can speak; there’s no point in getting involved. Unfortunately we’ve just got to let it happen. Despite it all the presenter continues when really the best advice would be to shut the fuck up. So Hershey leans over and again mimes the lever yank again, albeit with much more gusto and the inclusion of audio — a whistling sound and explosion. Finally the presenter stops mid-flow and just stares at Hershey open-mouthed.
“I presume you’re new here?” Hershey asks the unfortunate bastard. He nods in mute reply. “Well, so you know, that was me pulling the ejector seat.”
The presenter still looks dumbfounded. He glances around looking for support and gets none. Most people in the room have experience of the ejector seat either first or secondhand. It was an infamous technique of the insensitive man.
Hershey pulls the metaphorical lever one more time and jerks up as if blasted from his chair, eyes already on the screen of his mobile and apparently checking e-mail. Oh, the curse of importance. After a couple of stabs at the keypad he looks up and meets the presenter’s wide eyes.
“So you know for next time, just to help you out, the ejector seat means I’ve had enough and I’m leaving the room. Just don’t let it get that far in future. Lunchtime!” he says, then wafts out of the room.
The door clicks shut behind him, a small sound that is very loud in the deathly silent conference room. Liam looks sideways at me with a raised eyebrow. I shrug to say, I know, he’s a twat, but what can you do?
“I guess that’s it then guys,” I verbalise.
Silently the suits stand and file out the door. I take pity on the presenter who’s sitting still and statue-like, staring at nothing. A Trafalgar Square pigeon shitting on his head wouldn’t look out of place. I clap the guy on his shoulder (still no idea what his name is) and exit myself.
In the corridor Liam is leaning against the wall waiting for me. He looks bemused. “What was all that about?” he asks, pushing off and falling into step alongside me.
“As you’re an HR Gestapo bastard, I really don’t think I should be answering that question.”
“My lips are sealed and I’m not a bastard. So tell all.”
I know I shouldn’t reveal my true thoughts about Hershey, but I can’t help myself. I’m tired of him, tired of the Bank and tired of my culpability in its ridiculous and false culture, so I force my political doubts to one side.
“Just Hershey getting bored and wanting to be somewhere else,” I reply, shrugging. “He’s pretty much untouchable. The Old Man let’s him do what he wants and Hershey lets everyone else know it, so he can be as big an arsehole as he likes and no one says anything.”
“Does he do it often?”
“Less so these days. Anyone in the know just doesn’t bother to invite him to meetings, which is pretty much Hershey’s aim anyway.”
“So by being irritating he gets what he wants,” Liam says. It’s not a question.
“I guess so,” I reply, “but frankly it suits everyone. We don’t see Oz, he doesn’t see us. It’s best that way.”
We walk for a few yards in silence. I nod at a few people I vaguely know even though they’re all twats. I put anyone who works for the Bank in that category.
“Do you like Valentine?” Liam asks.
“Like him?” I’m incredulous. “How can anyone like him? Even his mother has to hate his guts.”
“Okay, different question. Do you respect him?”
Now that’s really not much of a question either. He’s thinking of the old adage, that you don’t have to like someone to be able to respect them and therefore work with them.
“No, absolutely not. He’s talentless, work-shy and openly steals everyone else’s ideas. I doubt he’s ever had an original thought in his life.”
As we reach my office Liam asks, “So how has he managed to rise so far?”
I can only laugh. “How does anyone get on in life? On the coattails of others. In this case Culpepper, so the rumour goes. I’ve always found the Chairman insightful, a shit, but not stupid. Hershey must have something on the old man.”
Liam seems to think about that one for a moment.
“Why all the questions?” I ask.
Liam shrugs. “New guy wanting to learn the ropes from an old hand?”
I snort in response. “I only do it for caffeine.”
Liam’s phone chimes. He pulls it out and looks at it. “I’ve got to go,” he says. “Another meeting. Catch you later.”
I sit down behind my desk, thinking about Liam’s comments for the merest of moments before I mentally shrug and flip open my mobile phone. I hit ‘C’ for speed dial, wait a few moments whilst it connects, rings and is finally answered.
“What?” Claire asks, her tone so cold it’s ice, ice, baby. I groan. Now that white rap, 80s shit will be rolling through my head for the rest of the day.
“Just wanted to see how you are, darling,” I mollify.
“As if you fucking care,” she replies. I’m shocked to hear the sharp drag of a cigarette, the exhale of smoky breath like a dragon’s snort. No, it can’t be. Claire’s never smoked.
“Of course I care,” I say, though not with a lot of conviction. “Where did you stay last night?” I curse myself for asking — it sounds weak because it is.
“With a friend,” she says, deliberately non-committal.
“Do you want to meet for lunch?”
She laughs. “No thanks, I’m busy. I’ve got some exercise booked in.”
Exercise? This is getting stranger by the minute, I think.
“I didn’t know you’d joined a gym.”
Claire laughs, deeply this time like she’s just heard the funniest joke ever.
“I’ve gotta go,” she dismisses me.
“’Bye,” I say to the ether. I drop the phone onto my desk. You know I could swear that I’d heard her giggle coquettishly just as the connection was being cut.
As usual the decisions are made for me and my lunch hour is to be another period spent alone at my desk. I sigh and nudge the mouse to wake up the monitor, consoling myself with the fact that at least I’ve some important pinball games to play.