The Corporatorium: The Workplace of the Future (Episode 4)
Thursday
It was late in the day when it happened. The blood-red industrial carpeting
absorbed what feeble light was emitted from the overhead fluorescents; the
ventilation system grudgingly released only enough oxygen to keep us conscious.
The absence of light and air combined to lull everyone into a post-lunch
stupor. And then it happened. A loud "Ping!" announced the
arrival of a Memorandum of Opportunity in everyone's Inbox.
M E M O R A N D U
M O F
O P P O R T U N I T Y
From: National Practice Director
To: All Practice Employees
A Practice-wide web cast has been scheduled for this Friday
at 12 noon EST. You are all encouraged
to attend. A Lotus Notes Calendar
invitation with login/dial-in information will be disseminated shortly.
Our National Practice director was an abrupt woman referred
to simply as "Capital B" or more familiarly as "B." At this
point in time no one could remember, or agree on, what her actual name was but
as she was only seen when employees needed to be terminated, or when hosting
pointless web casts during which questions were strictly forbidden and any kind
of interaction discouraged, this did not present a problem. What everyone did agree on, however, was the
fact that she was "a bitch with a capital B." TWO had once called her "a royal
bitch."
"No," one of the Cerberus objected. "Not
royal."
"Certainly not royal," another agreed.
"Not enough class there for royalty," the third
Cerberus put in.
"No," the first Cerberus continued, "She's
just a bitch with a Capital B." The
name stuck.
Our workstations¾some
people called them "cells" but they were more like stalls in a horse
trailer: you could walk in with relative dignity but they were so narrow that
to leave you had to back out. Admittedly
I have longer than average arms but stretching required me to stand in the hall
otherwise my knuckles would crash against the walls on either side of my
workstation.
With energy fueled by anxiety, heads popped up over
workstation walls prairie dog fashion. Anxious eyes scanned for wandering
officers. "What the fuck?"
Nigel mouthed.
I shrugged then sank back into my chair to read the
inevitable tweets that were sure to follow.
Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY
Think it's more layoffs?
Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
Of course.
What else could it be?
Prometheus Jones @Theus
Can't be more layoffs¾no
one left to lay off!
Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP
It's not layoffs—those are hardly web cast worthy at this
point.
Xavier Jiménez @Madame X
Guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow.
Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
Whatever. This CAN'T BE GOOD!
We were all still reeling from the last few rounds of
layoffs. In the first round, all local IT staff positions had been
"eliminated" with the grand aim to "reduce redundancies within
our processes," and those duties assigned to another group because
"they do something with computers, too." The resulting debacle ended with the second
group also being eliminated and all computer functions being outsourced to
India.
The corporation’s name was Esperanto for “oneness”¾Esperanto, by the way, was
an artificial language invented in 1887 by a Polish ophthalmologist who used the
pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto; tellingly Esperanto translates as "one who
hopes.” The corporation’s name carried with it the tagline, "Transforming
the workplace of today into the workplace of tomorrow." But, the
corporation had, under the leadership of Lizzie Borden, eliminated so many
jobs, laid off so many people, one was left to surmise that the workplace of
tomorrow wouldn't include any actual workers.
Missed
Episode 3, Gay Day in Hell? Read it here.
Read Episode
5, Ghost, Meet Devil, here.
Copyright
© 2016 Larry Benjamin
D
I S C L A I M E R
The
characters and events described in this blog post exist only in its pages and
the author's imagination.
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