A short story I wrote today.
A MAN.
In an office with a not so worn wooden chair, behind a solid oak office desk, with card catalogues and behind him file cabinets in a shelf within an ordinary office, in an ordinary office building, we have a man. He’s just a man, lower middle management, he has more staff under him in the organization than he has over him, and he’s quite content with that. It’s a good job. Not that it gives him much entitlement, rather comfort. At the very least, it does make him feel like he’s not just anybody. He’s someone, on some level.
He and the man’s four colleagues have one secretary to support them in their everyday duties, and an office janitor who comes in and empties the trash, picks up coffee cups, cleans the floors.
It’s not that he doesn’t care about the work that he does, because he does, but when he leaves the office building, he leaves the job inside.
This is a day like any other, most days for the man is. Yet, the man is hit with a troubling realization. Despite having worked in this position, in this office for years, he is struck by something that really shouldn't bother him too much. But it does seem like this very much isn’t the case.
He has this internal thought, much like an internal voice spoken inside his of own head.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
The man doesn’t know why this is troubling exactly, but it sends cold shivers down his spine. Perplexed, he feels as though there’s some sort of blurred screen before his eyes, almost as if he’s looking out of a smashed car window, or an old man without his glasses, where everything seen before him makes perfect sense, and he knows what to do and how to act, it’s just that the details in from of him seems blurred. It’s like the work that he does is performed by some sort of self-automation, not like he’s been reduced to an actual robot, not at all, but he feels there’s something robotic about the work he performs.
The man feels this is quite unsettling, and it’s not something he can make sense of, nether can the man explain why this is hitting him the very troubling way that it does.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
The voice keeps eating away at him, like every time it takes a loop inside of his mind, some small piece of him is consumed by it, making him somehow lesser of a man. The pieces taken from him are not clear, but irredeemable non the less.
The man is in doubt as how to approach or handle this newfound insight. If it even is one. He does however feel abundantly certain he needs to do something, as to stop this chipping away on the man’s character. He feels as if though if he stays passive, with this thought inside of his head, something horrible will happen, as if he someday will be reduced to something else, not a man, but something else he is unable to understand or define. But would not want to succumb to.
The man is not a remarkable man in any way, he’s very much an ordinary one. The man both knows, and accepts that, and he’s not too opposed to it either. And, by all logic the man feels he possesses, he thinks that this is most likely, and most probably not the case, that he would be unique in this, with this feeling, just like with everything else.
The man concludes, if this is the case for him, even though not having realized it, at the very least, the same should by logic be true to more people in this office than just himself.
The man feels desperate in staying inaction, and he starts to devise a plan. He knows it’s not a very good one, but he does feel that he needs to do something. So, the man starts to inject small little inquiries to his secretary every time they interact, to perhaps find a small nugget of truth, he is however feeling he should approach this very cautiously, he feels he cannot be very blunt.
So, these small little breadcrumbs of inquiry he feels, after having engaged in this so-called inquiry, which is more like attaching meaningless little markers to their interactions is failing, he cannot deduce even the smallest hint that his secretary should have been stricken with the man’s own challenge.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
So, grasping for further measures as to not stay passive, to not get desperation get the best of him, next he tries to apply the same tactic to what little interaction he has with his four closest colleagues, not too obvious, again, however. The man is cautious. And the breadcrumbs yet again results in nothing.
The man realizes he needs to device another plan. While he can feel pieces of himself being robbed by whatever this is, If the case is such that he indeed does not know what he is doing, or the effects of what he is doing, is true. Of which the man is very much convinced of. Then wouldn’t he be able to break down a days’ worth of work in smaller pieces and more closely examine them? Piece by piece. The man, lacking any other approach, indeed thinks so.
Now, the man sitting in his desk, plotting as to not get consumed by this consuming feeling, comes up with yet an idea. He is now sitting at his desk trying to define what it is that he does, and so the next question that poses the man is; How many tasks that I do in a day can be reduced to just one task? The definition, the man thinks, is what would have a clear definition of a start and a finish in measurable time.
The man now starts on a list, he tries to define what he does during a day in distinct activities. By the time the workday ends, he has now defined 40 work processes, a nice round number to start, with a clear start and stop event.
Now, not really knowing where this would lead, he is now convinced that the system in where he resides should be able to be probed. The man now has another plan, he now proceeds to pick each one of these 40 tasks, going down this list, and not do 4 of 40.
If this is picking up mail from the incoming tray of the letters the secretary delivers to him, he’s to simply throw it in the trash. He will then proceed, until the next such an event comes along.
This leaves the man now completing 38 tasks of 40 in every such cycle of the day, at least resulting in 4 tasks effectively not being handled.
A week goes by for the man, the voice in his head keeps reoccurring like a bad daydream every so often, and yet nothing happens. Except, the voices do ever increase. He continues for yet another week, but no complaints from anyone, just nothing.
The man is getting increasingly desperate.
And so, the man devices another plan, other much rather, re-defines the previous one. The man now makes a schedule, with all these 40 defined tasks, he is going to not do every fourth one, so if it’s the fourth one he skips at the first round of the day, and thus throws in the trash, he will then begin with task number two the next round, skipping over task number five. And so the man throws himself into another loop. Effectively discarding 10 out of every 40 tasks.
A week, two, three passes. Nothing. No result, except the voice in his head. It keeps repeating,
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
The man’s trashcan keeps filling up, the janitor now empties it at least twice a day, rather than on every Friday afternoon. Moreover, the trashcan resides in plain sight beside the man’s desk, so surely the secretary would notice that nowadays, it feels up in a rather abnormal pace.
The next day, in an office chair, behind an oak office desk, in an ordinary office, in an ordinary office building, we have our man.
In comes the secretary, who usually is wearing a rather neutral expression on her face, is now wearing a quite different one. It’s a rather a bit smug, like she clearly knows something she shouldn’t. She stands there for a second looking at the man. Now, in following, comes his four colleagues.
This has never happened to the man, none of these people has ever been in in his office all congregated like this. Yet, it seems very clear why they have. A man’s neglect. The man silently but yet frantically goes.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
The secretary says, looking at the filled-up trashcan.
“I see you’re starting to catch on.”