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lobelia321More weird office stuff (it's just to keep my fingers limber but we'll see what emerges).
Continued from here
3
There was something going on, something in the hallway. People were milling. A flurry of activity coagulated and dissolved around the bubbler in the corner. Minnie from Accounting hurried away on her clickety-click heels.
Oberon looked left. He looked right. He took a deep breath. He marched across the hall into his office.
Well, it wasn't his office exactly. It was the office he shared with eleven other people. It was his open-plan office cubicle. It was his desk, his swivel chair, his plyboard partition, his phone stand on its rotating stand, his phone, his computer, his desk drawers. His job.
But not for much longer. Because finally, after twenty-two years with the firm, his fortunes were about to change. Oberon Villiers was going to be promoted to Section Manager.
Section managers didn't have to share an open-plan office. Section managers got to sit in a glass-enclosed office of their own, with a name plate on the door and, most incredible of all, a personal assistant in the shape of Antonella Cooper. Section managers didn't have to share their days with the unwashed scum on the open floor. And only last week, the previous section manager had resigned. Out of the blue, all of a sudden, after thirty years on the job. And the only persons who had been with the company longer than the previous section manager were Oberon and Martha, the cleaning lady, and she didn't count.
Oberon looked pityingly to the right and the left, at his fellow sufferers soon to be -- triumph of triumphs -- his employees, his underlings, his very own minions.
Tom at the window was playing a game on the company computer and didn't even bother to pretend waving a greeting at Oberon. Larry further along flipped through a mail order catalogue for garden plants. Sam popped a chocolate into her mouth. Buzby had a bevy of eager listeners gathered round his desk and was making lewd gestures.
What a bunch of losers.
Oberon sat down on his chair. He opened his top drawer and placed a perfectly sharp HB pencil parallel to the edge of the desk and next to it a white oblong eraser. He used his fingertips only to move aside the magnetic container used for paper clips and the post-it dispenser.
Underneath the metal hole punch, there was a note.
It was handwritten on standard issue memo-pad paper. It said, 'Obi, not your turn yet!'
Oberon crumpled up the note. Nobody was looking in his direction. Everybody had their gaze trained on the door of the section manager's office. Whence issued a man noone had seen in this office before. A tall man, a confident-looking man, a man in a yellow tie and with one of those newfangled square-rimmed spectacles. A hideous apparition.
"Hello, everybody," the unknown man said. "I'm your new section manager."
-----
Continued from here
3
There was something going on, something in the hallway. People were milling. A flurry of activity coagulated and dissolved around the bubbler in the corner. Minnie from Accounting hurried away on her clickety-click heels.
Oberon looked left. He looked right. He took a deep breath. He marched across the hall into his office.
Well, it wasn't his office exactly. It was the office he shared with eleven other people. It was his open-plan office cubicle. It was his desk, his swivel chair, his plyboard partition, his phone stand on its rotating stand, his phone, his computer, his desk drawers. His job.
But not for much longer. Because finally, after twenty-two years with the firm, his fortunes were about to change. Oberon Villiers was going to be promoted to Section Manager.
Section managers didn't have to share an open-plan office. Section managers got to sit in a glass-enclosed office of their own, with a name plate on the door and, most incredible of all, a personal assistant in the shape of Antonella Cooper. Section managers didn't have to share their days with the unwashed scum on the open floor. And only last week, the previous section manager had resigned. Out of the blue, all of a sudden, after thirty years on the job. And the only persons who had been with the company longer than the previous section manager were Oberon and Martha, the cleaning lady, and she didn't count.
Oberon looked pityingly to the right and the left, at his fellow sufferers soon to be -- triumph of triumphs -- his employees, his underlings, his very own minions.
Tom at the window was playing a game on the company computer and didn't even bother to pretend waving a greeting at Oberon. Larry further along flipped through a mail order catalogue for garden plants. Sam popped a chocolate into her mouth. Buzby had a bevy of eager listeners gathered round his desk and was making lewd gestures.
What a bunch of losers.
Oberon sat down on his chair. He opened his top drawer and placed a perfectly sharp HB pencil parallel to the edge of the desk and next to it a white oblong eraser. He used his fingertips only to move aside the magnetic container used for paper clips and the post-it dispenser.
Underneath the metal hole punch, there was a note.
It was handwritten on standard issue memo-pad paper. It said, 'Obi, not your turn yet!'
Oberon crumpled up the note. Nobody was looking in his direction. Everybody had their gaze trained on the door of the section manager's office. Whence issued a man noone had seen in this office before. A tall man, a confident-looking man, a man in a yellow tie and with one of those newfangled square-rimmed spectacles. A hideous apparition.
"Hello, everybody," the unknown man said. "I'm your new section manager."
-----