The Office (Not Affiliated With the TV Show)

The secretaries behind the desk had seen better days. Fully made-up, quick-started by a caffeine overkill and chained to their stations, they were seemingly smitten with their semi-charmed lives as slaves to the calendar and watching the clock. 

Rachael Ray played on a television across the room, though the chubby 8-year old boy and I in the waiting area had no interest in her; she was clearly only entertaining the women at the desk who appeared less than delighted with their career. 

It somewhat distressed me to observe this. Granted that these are merely observations and I could likely be mistaken, but probably not. I truly believe that these women would have given anything to be Vegas showgirls, powerful politicians, even Bon Jovi groupies. But fate would have it that they were stuck in the office this day, yesterday, tomorrow…forever.

It made me wish they would one day spontaneously take to one’s heels, leap from their desk corral, run rampidly through the workspace, toss files in the air and knock display cases off their feet before fleeing the office penitentiary. Empowerment! Deliverance! Liberation! They’d run, as fast as their legs, jellied from days of sitting in a swivel chair, would let them. They’d run to Vegas, to Paris, to Timbuktu; they’d run, and they’d start a new life.

I snap out of it as my name is called and I am whisked to the back room for examination. 

I thought that I’d escaped the droning atmosphere upon my exit, but found out otherwise later on in the afternoon when I entered a different establishment.

It was nothing short of a version of prison I’ve conjured in my mind: Miami Vice color scheme, desks sprouting up here and there and accompanied by dated chairs covered in the equivalent of berber rug, and worst of all, the infestation of faux foliage, crawling up every wall, spilling from every ceiling, growing from every kernel of overrun carpet. Prison.

It was casual Friday, I assumed, as the employees freed themselves from the shackles of itchy slacks and blouses and opted for a more laid-back approach. At each station sat a dish of assorted candies, a silent incentive to sustain oneself through a gruesome nine to five in the expending work environment.

I pictured the office late at night, after all the employees had gone home to their families, their cats, or to the bar to drink the worries off their mind. Back at the office, however, the only sounds heard are the rustling of the faux plants, reaching their arms down from the walls and ceilings and into the assorted candy dish, a triumph after lingering all day in the presence of the workers. From the consumption of this candy these plants burgeoned, living off the sugar, their Miracle-Gro analog, and slowing devouring the office environment from which they, much like the employees, so longingly wanted to break free. Night after night they’d consume the sweets with hopes that someday their plastic branches would grow long enough to reach the exit.

I once told a wise man that asked me, “What are you afraid of?”:

“Being a secretary.”

I believe that the affairs I encountered today are reason enough to be fearful. Because much like the vision I have of the woebegone plants, reaching into the candy dish each night with the ambition of someday starting a new life in a happier place — I, too, desire something more. More than berber chairs and placing my sanity on the shoulders of Rachael Ray. More than Miami Vice and casual Fridays, more than sitting at a desk staring at numbers and dates and names, all the while visioning reveries of “the good life”…

Let this be my stimulant to work harder, better, and with more passion than ever before.

Truly yours,

jc