New Hope For Small Men: Chapter 12

by Grant Bailie

Robert only worked four days a week at the cable company. Four days was all he needed to pay his rent and buy the meager amount of supplies he needed to survive on. The manager wanted him to work more. Despite the mysterious symbols denoting various performance issues that every day appeared on the chart next to Robert’s name, he was a reliable worker; he came on time every day he was scheduled to and did not leave until his shift was over. And people who came in when they were supposed to and stayed the allotted amount of time were a commodity. The manager was always replacing somebody, interviewing somebody, punishing somebody.

“Take one for the team, Robert,” the manager said. “What’s another day to you? What do you do with yourself for three-day weekends anyway?”

“I have things,” Robert said, though he had no things and mostly what he did with his three-day weekends was smoke cigarettes, masturbate, look out the window, or have tea with Mr. Carleton while Mr. Carelton looked out the window.

“Just this once. Work this one Friday and I will never ask you again. I need someone I can count on to show up.”

“This Friday?”

“Yes, this Friday. I’m not talking about a Friday a month from now. I’m not talking about Good Friday. Just this one Friday.”

“OK.”

“OK? Really? The great Robert has deemed to finally work a Friday for me?”

Already Robert was regretting it. It was remarkable how quickly the manager could switch from pleading to sarcastic ingratitude.

“There’s going to be a new girl starting Friday too,” he said. “You can show her the ropes. How things are supposed to be done, not necessarily the way you do them, Robert. I’d do it myself but I have a family function I have to attend.”

Robert noticed several of his coworkers standing by the water cooler in the corner. The phones were not ringing at the moment — all was momentarily right in world of cable — and the workers who were gathered there had reached the sales quotas for the week. They were his star employees, some of whom even had stars next to their names on the chart. Some of them even had purple stars with green circles around them, which Robert did not fully understand but figured was something good.

“What about Jack,” Robert said. “Or Cindy?”

“What about them?”

“Have you asked them about working Friday?”

“You just said you would work it, Robert. Are you backing out on me now?”

“No. No, I’ll work it. I just wondered if you’d asked.”

“I asked you, Robert. And as I recall, you said yes. Anyway, Jack and Cindy are going to be at the same family function.”

“Are they related to you?”

“Are you trying to be a smart ass, Robert? Are they related to me? It’s a big family function, OK? They are friends of some cousins of mine. You’re OK with that, I hope.”

“Of course,” Robert said. The manager was an asshole. There was no getting around the fact. Robert wondered if he was an asshole when he went home at night — or on the drive home even, or on trips to grocery stores and restaurants. Was he an asshole with his wife and kid? Was he an asshole at family functions? It seemed impossible to Robert that the manager, too, had feelings, had hopes and dreams, had desires that he could only realize alone in his bed or in what must have been a fairly spacious and well-appointed bathroom.

And the manager did have a wife and kid. There were pictures of them on his desk, and he had made a big deal about the birth of his son a year ago, handing out cheap cigars and letting everyone smoke them in the office if they wanted to, though no one did because no on quite believed him.

But a wife. She looked pretty in the picture on his desk, shading her eyes from the sun. There was someone who had, at least momentarily, loved him.

Robert sometimes considered getting another job. But getting another job was a lot of work, and involved walking into strange buildings and filling out paperwork and then, maybe, being interviewed in strange offices by men and women he had never seen before and who themselves might in fact also be assholes.

“So you’ll be here Friday.”

“Yes.”

Comments