Filing (fiction)

She arrives at 8:30 as she does every morning. She hangs her purse on the hook on the back of the door, slings her jacket over the back of the chair, checks her email for anything urgent and then heads to the kitchen to become one of the chosen few to tap into the first pot of coffee that the receptionist has so lovingly brewed.
Checking her email this morning there is a message from her boss (who comes in at 9am) that reads, “Can you please pull the PST file for me?” She re-reads the email just in case her eyes are blurry and she’s missed something. She hasn’t. She sits in her chair - the one that has a screw or a staple or some damn thing sticking up on the right, outer-edge of the seat which prevents her from being able to sit cross legged, though she has never mentioned this to anyone because she finds the price of office chairs exorbitant and she doesn’t feel that the mild inconvenience of not being able to sit cross legged from time to time justifies the purchase of a new office chair – for a bit longer than normal, before heading to the kitchen for her first cup of coffee.
As usual she is early and the receptionist, Mikaila, is there and greets her with genuine happiness. She answers Mikaila’s questions haphazardly, her mind somewhat occupied. She catches herself almost dropping a tea bag into her cup which is full of coffee and gives her head a shake. Per ritual, she deposits her coffee cup on the low, black lacquered table near the front door and exits the office to use the washroom shared by everyone on the seventh floor. Though her commute is only half an hour, she finds that her hair gets inordinately messy if it’s windy, and she often arrives with grit (no doubt brake dust) on her face from the reams of traffic that grind past her while she waits for the light to change at the pedestrian crosswalk near her office. And one time she was glad she had used the washroom straightaway because she had her t-shirt on backwards, which had definitely explained the choking sensation she was beleaguered with on the commute in. In the washroom mirror she notes that her posture is already suffering. She’s been at work for ten minutes. Those that know her well know that she is downtrodden by her sloping shoulders. She pulls them back, holds herself erect, smiles confidently at herself in the mirror and notices that the wrinkles around the corners of her eyes seem more pronounced than usual. Whatever. She’s still healthy, fit and good looking and she needs to hold herself with more confidence. This stupid email should not have rattled her, but it did.
She returns to her desk and spends some time deciding how to respond. Her mother has told her that she needs to pick her battles. Granted, this was regarding one of her ex-boyfriends from days past that had raised her ire by his continued dedication to leaving his rank and soiled socks on the bedroom floor as way of showcasing his exhaustion and overall male helplessness, which had – in the short term – resulted in her surveying the sullied room in question before leaving as quickly as she had come, much to the surprise of her boyfriend. What her mother didn’t seem to understand was that this act was the harbinger of something bigger, and she didn’t want to stick around to see what that something was.
She decides to pick this battle. She shares an office with her boss. It’s a small office. It’s smaller than her living room at home. If he wants the PST file, he can roll over (in his chair that doesn’t have something metal and pointy jutting into his flesh) to the cabinet next to her and pull it out all by himself. She writes, “The PST file, along with all the tax files, are at the front of the filing cabinet behind the bank reconciliations”. She presses send and looks at the time: he will be here in twelve minutes.
And he is. She smiles politely and tells him good morning. She can feel her neck tense as she senses him going through his emails. He says nothing to her, nor does he roll over to the cabinet next to her to remove the now-popular PST file. She’s down to the dregs of her coffee and decides she needs a cup of tea, and so heads back to the kitchen.
One of her coworkers (that she is madly infatuated with) is in the kitchen and asks her how she is doing and she gives a mundane reply. He asks her what happened to her leg, as she has a couple of deep scratches there from a somewhat technically challenging hike that she went on with her brother over the weekend. She is suddenly overwhelmingly frustrated by the lack of progress that she has made with Evan over the last few months. Granted, her idea of coming on to him is saying, “I like your shirt” and it typically takes her five minutes to get up the nerve to even say that and when she does she either mumbles it or says it so softly that he can’t even hear her correctly. But she is consistent, and she is attentive and she feels a sudden urge to kick the kitchen door closed, grab fistfuls of today’s attractive shirt in her hands, push him up against the freshly wiped counter and thrust her impudent mouth against his so that he will either rebuff her or become aroused. She instead gives an equally inane explanation as to how she managed to injure herself hiking, while inexpertly fishing her teabag out her cup and slopping tea on the counter.
En route back to her office she sees that her boss is in with his boss, and that the door is shut. She knows they are discussing her. They have been discussing her for some time. Why else would the door be perpetually closed to her in this small office? She is part of a team, is she not? And yet she cannot remember the last time when the three of them met to collaborate on an idea, a project, or simply to check in.
She sits at her desk and glances out the window. The window faces the brickwork of a building immediately next to it. One of the windows – the opaque one – is a bathroom, and she has occasionally seen women getting changed in it, with their forms blurred and distorted. She can’t see the sky or the ground.
She decides they are discussing her lack of respect. It’s true: she is disrespectful, but she’s never bought into the idea of respecting someone because of their position in whatever hierarchy they’re currently situated in. Once, she was with her family downtown when a motorcade procession went by with President Clinton in it. She had gazed down from the overpass at the limousine and the crowds lining the streets and had caught the eye of a security guard who noted her bemused look and he said to her, “Big deal, huh?”. Another time she was at a bar with her boyfriend and was being encouraged to snort Jack Daniels up her nose by a man in a suit that was worth more than the 1980 Toyota Corolla she was driving at the time and she refused, having deigned that nothing was so extravagant in life as to find its way up her nostrils, and her boyfriend was embarrassed and tried to make amends for her non-conformist ways. She reckoned that anyone could buy an expensive suit: she needed something more in order for her to become reverent.
This is not to say that she’s lazy or stupid or that she lacks ambition: on the contrary. She is adept at the things which she enjoys, which do not, predominately, include pulling PST files.
She pulls out her bank book and looks at the balance. She ruminates on the amount she has in her account, in GICs, in RRSPs, in mutual funds. She is pretty sure she can cover her mortgage payments by pumping gas or stocking shelves if she so desires. She desires not to do this anymore.
She places the one photo that hangs above her desk in an empty banking box. Next in is her plant, which she has carried with her from job to job over the past ten years. She ensures that all personal information is wiped from her computer and she scavenges through her desk drawers for any personal effects: there are none. As an act of sabotage, she deletes the file that she had containing all the user IDs and passwords for her various software logins. She has never forgotten the conversation that she had with the CFO (her boss’s boss) whereby he thought that it was mandatory that an employee give two weeks notice to their employer. She had patiently explained that an employee need not give any notice to any employer, ever. It was in that moment that she realized the CFO thought that, in some regard, the employer owned the employee to the extent that they could dictate and manipulate two weeks of that person’s time against their will.
She sees her boss’s arms flailing in the office of the CFO. It’s clearly an animated discussion. She’s surprised but not surprised by the level of animation that the conversation is obviously taking. It’s a PST file. But it’s not a PST file.
Two minutes later her boss comes back into their office and asks if she has a minute. She says of course she does, and swivels around her chair to face him.
He says – with the condescending air of the righteous – that he’s noticed a change in her attitude lately and wonders if anything is happening in her personal life that has perhaps exacerbated this.
She shakes her head resolutely. No, nothing is happening in her personal life to have affected a change in her attitude. But can he give concrete details as to this “change of attitude” of which he speaks?
He rattles off a few issues that he has obviously brainstormed with the CFO in order to get things down in writing. The last of which is the PST file.
She nods her head, attempting to look serious. She asks why, given the litany of strikes against her, it has taken this long for management to address such an issue.
She is rewarded with a blank stare.
She asks why he waits until she is gone to direct his directives at her via email, instead of speaking with her face to face.
He replies that, because she leaves at 4 o’clock, she often isn’t there to answer his questions.
She asks if her leaving at 4 o’clock is problematic for him.
He indicates that it’s not “entirely conducive” to running an efficient department.
She agrees. She extracts her personnel file from the cabinet next to him (without sending him an email first) and shows the document, signed by the CFO, which defines her wage and her working hours. She breaks down her wage to a per hour basis and extrapolates how much it will cost if he wishes her to stay until 5pm every day, and does he wish to make her an offer for this sum?
He does not.
She asks him if there is anything else that he would like to discuss or document with her, and he says there isn’t it. She pulls the PST from the cabinet next to him and hands it to him, along with her resignation letter.
At this moment he looks vaguely panicked: hasn’t expected this. He comments that she has listed her final day of work as today and she says, “You’re a smart guy, I’m sure you’ll figure it out”.
She grabs the banker’s box, only a third full, hefts it against her hip and starts towards the door. The concept of saving face prevents her boss from trailing after her.
As she waits for the elevator she promises herself that she will allow herself at least a week before she concerns herself with what she’ll do next. The elevator dings and the coworker of whom she is so enamored steps out, coffee and bagel in hand. He sees the box of personal possessions resting on her hip and arches an eyebrow.
She gently pushes him back into the elevator.