The Art of Work

There is a special art to getting someone off the phone in as quick a time possible. I was nearing perfection. If a call came through that I could answer but if it would take too much of my time then I’d forward it on to someone else claiming ignorance. Otherwise I’d answer lightning-fast and unusually unhelpfully.
That was what was happening lately.
Time was ticking too quickly. Passing me by while I sat in an ergonomically-friendly desk chair with a frowning posture and miserable rounded shoulders. I was slowly dying and no one seemed to realize, let alone care.
And why should they? I mean I didn’t. Or did I?
I found my true train of thoughts constantly interrupted by meaningless phone calls. Half-witted folks droning at the end of a phone line. An old woman who has lost her husband is seeking help with the medical insurance claim. She is out of pocket to the tune of thousands. I am the one who picked up the phone.
I am the one who transfers it to someone who is paid to care.
I am paid.
But do not care.
This thought breaks when I receive a notification I have new mail. The office funny guy sending another chain-email. I would like to break him. Emotionally. Intellectually. Physically. Break him and leave him lying in a cooling pool of blood. Cloying around his ankles.
This boiling thought is broken by a phone ringing at an unoccupied desk where someone has left their mobile on and unattended.
I am tempted to break it.
Yeah so the thin veneer is crumbling down. Collapsing. It took two years. A lot of man hours. A solid regimen of 9-5. Monday to Friday. Two Towers fell. Wars raged and are raging. People fought, lost their lives, people were killed, murdered, planes exploded, trains collided, countries flooded, volcanoes erupted.
Disasters.
While I hacked away at my keyboard.
Bent over a monitor.
Sitting in meetings.
Traveling to work.
But what none of any of it has answered is where does all this go. To battle away at work until I’m comfortably numb enough to accept it? Where I can accept work and this ongoing battle with insanity as merely a means to an end? Where’s the bold dashing anti-hero – who takes me under my wing, shows me the error of my ways. Opens my eyes. Movies don’t do it anymore. I have an opinion but nobody is listening. I’m not listening to anyone else either. No one’s life plan will work for me just as mine won’t work for anyone else. Only I’m someone who accepts that. I won’t ram it down your throat – you must lead life as I do. I’m no shining example of morality. I make a choice not to sleep with someone. It’s not some moral high ground I’m taking here. Maybe it’s a superiority complex. They’re too ugly and cheap for me. They’re not worth the time and effort especially considering it takes a lot to make me feel these days. I don’t fit all the molds. I’m in this world but not of it.
The clichés are no longer fitting. Everyone else feels this way and that only makes the isolation all the worse.
You feel shit. So does everyone else.
But you don’t care. I’m afraid to admit it but neither does anyone else.
Am I being brave expressing this? No. Bravery in the new age is over, a fantasy garnered by big-selling movie executives. They dish out and sell bravery, and romance, and honor, and intrigue as they see it. They own the rights. You can only buy into it.

[extract from the novella The Subversion of Richard by Charles Lidgard, published 2002 by Trouser Books]