The Martyrdom of Saint Jane
"Why is my keyboard sticky?" Jane asked, tapping at the keys with her fingertips to test the tackiness and pulling a face somewhere between concerned and disgusted. "What's been on it?"
"Whatever Roger had on his hands probably. Your old login won't work on this system yet, so you will need to borrow someone's." Shirley replied disinterestedly. She was giving Jane the on-boarding process, but only by throwing her blindly into the cargo hold.
"Can I get some wipes or something?"
"I would recommend asking around to see who'll let you use their credentials. Everyone will probably need their own all day to get any work done though, so that's something you will have to address." Shirley continued, ignoring Jane’s question.
"Uh, how?"
"That's the spirit, ask the tough questions."
Shirley accentuated the point with a pat on the shoulder as she started to turn and walk away.
"Don't just ignore me!” Jane commanded. “I have a sticky keyboard and I can't get onto the system."
"If you can't get on then you won’t need the keyboard, so the stickiness won't bother you. Better solve the big problems first like login details. Time is passing and you’ve still not got anything done." Shirley called back without looking.
Jane tried to argue but Shirley and her ill-fitting skirt and ugly blouse combo were out of the door. Jane had always considered Shirley to be a bit of a bitch, but now she was confirmed to be unhelpful too. At least she could surge into any future engagements with a sense of justified obstinacy; her second favourite kind of obstinacy.
With an exaggerated shake of the head, causing her short bob of hair to jiggle slightly, Jane crossed her arms and stared at the unusable work station. When that proved too meagre of a gesture to convey her feelings, she let out a heavy sigh to add some much-needed gravitas. Nobody working nearby took any notice.
After a few minutes of highly competent sulking, Jane determined that she would have to start solving these problems all by herself as usual; no-one else was going to do anything about it, just like every other problem she encountered around the office. She wondered why she even bothered some days, slaving away day-in and day-out like that for a bunch of ungrateful dunderheads. It would be no different in this new office to her old one. But eventually Jane would just stop picking up the pieces after them; then they would see what she really did around the office and they’d all be sorry. There’d be spilled sugar all over the kitchen worktop, teabags in the sink, and no passive-aggressive notes to keep them in line. Then they’d finally appreciate her, just when it was too late.
Pursing her lips, Jane stood up from the paltry desk-offering which had been made to her and looked for a likely candidate to give her a system login. Her immediate desk-neighbour, much to her displeasure, was Jerry Laine. Currently he was sitting and sniffing to himself like an overgrown child with a cold whilst he leaned forwards and stared into a monitor. White light reflected from his over-sized, brown-framed glasses. Engaging in conversation with Jerry was deeply undesirable at the best of times, let alone when she needed something from him; it’d require her to be nice to him, and then she’d never get away from the cretin.
Looking further afield, beyond Sarah Jones’ empty desk, was Gillian Kleiner-Smith. She was harmless enough but not likely to give up any system information without first clearing it with Shirley explicitly, who would then sneer at Jane for not sorting herself out autonomously.
Gillian sat next to Andrew Mure, a balding, late forties stock co-ordinator who seemed to have no drive to go further in his career and even less understanding of how to do his job. He might be a good source of credentials.
Jane stomped her way quietly across the stained and worn carpet until she reached Andrew’s desk, to the soundtrack of clattering keyboards and furious mouse clicks. No-one else’s keyboard sounded sticky. Why was it just hers? Someone probably thought it would be funny; heard about her moving into Roger's old desk and smeared something horrid on it. Well, it was unprofessional and just the sort of thing she expected from this lot.
By the time she got to Andrew’s desk, Jane had worked herself up into a healthy indignant strop, perfect for demanding an unreasonable amount of help.
“Good morning Andrew.” She snapped, putting on a brave face despite the despicable treatment to which she had been subjected thus far.
“Hm?” Andrew said, snapping out of the concentration he’d been directing towards his monitor. “Oh, morning Jane. How can I help?” he asked uncertainly; he was fairly sure that Jane worked in export control, and there were very few reasons for anyone from that department to visit his desk. All of the reasons which did exist were bad ones.
“I need your login details. Mine don’t work on this network yet.” Jane told him matter-of-factly.
Andrew regarded her with quiet conservatism. Export and security were closely linked departments and he suspected that someone had put Jane up to the task of testing him. Giving out login details was strictly against IT policy, and punishable by thumbscrews if his manager found out. Although Jane was generally the last person anyone would ask for help, even in the professional capacity in which she was expected to provide it, there was no other explanation for her request.
“I’m afraid I can’t give out my details to anyone, it’s a security risk.” He replied, waiting for the inevitable bored acceptance of the correct answer.
“I am not a security risk! I’ve been here for four years; that’s loyalty. Not that the company shows me any back. Do you really think I’m going to start selling secrets or causing problems? Let me have your credentials.” Jane spat back at Andrew. This was just typical of him, and of everyone else for that matter. Deliberately trying to get in her way and hiding behind policy to do it.
“No-one is allowed to give out their details, even to other employees.” Andrew recited from memory, a little nervously. Jane was turning redder.
“But I need them to log in because I can’t do any work otherwise!”
“I wouldn’t be able to do work either if I let you log in as me.” He counter-pointed.
“That’s a selfish attitude to take.” Jane snapped angrily “We’re supposed to be a team down here aren’t we?”
“What do you mean? Are you moving down here?” Andrew asked with confusion.
“Of course I am! Didn’t you get the memo? Out of the loop, are we?” she sneered back spitefully, eager to put him on the back foot.
“I don’t see anything about that in my inbox.” Andrew informed her after a quick search.
“Well I decided to move so I’m here, get over it. Now give me your details so I can get on. Shirley wanted you to give me your information and she won’t be happy if you don’t.”
Andrew’s already low confidence in the situation plummeted further. That definitely didn’t sound like something Shirley would want him to do; especially not after forcing him to memorise the entire IT security policy due to the ‘Free Money from Government’ email scandal.
“She hasn’t mentioned that to me…”
“Because she wanted me to tell you myself, of course. Now get on with it.” Jane was starting to shake gently in frustration at the failure of her expert negotiation skills.
“I… I’m going to double check with Shirley.” Andrew said, starting to stand up. Jane cursed internally; he was being such a Gillian about this.
“No! She doesn’t want to be bothered. She has an important meeting to be in.”
“Does she?” he tapped quickly on his keyboard. “There’s nothing in her calendar. I can see her over there in her office, too. We’ll just get this cleared up.”
“No. Leave it. I don’t need your help anyway.” She dismissively grumbled. “I need some wipes to clean my keyboard of whatever that animal Roger left all over it.”
Andrew looked at Jane’s outstretched hand.
“I don’t have any baby wipes or anything, sorry.”
Jane let out a low groan.
“Useless…” she muttered, walking away.
Upstairs in export control, David rested his head in one hand and pondered over the item in front of him. He was being asked to declare that, to the best of his knowledge, the package being exported that afternoon was in no way related to, or intended for use in, any military application. It was a standard question which he had answered many times, but it placed a significant duty of care on his shoulders, and each time he had to make the statement he conducted his work with due caution and genuine concern. Inevitably everything was above board, but David never let that dull his enthusiasm or work ethic.
This time, however, reading about the single Stinger missile which was being despatched overseas, he was struggling to sign the authorisation form in good conscience. Ballistic ordnance seemed like exactly the sort of thing which would be used in a military application, and in fact he would go as far as saying that it had incredibly few applications which weren’t military. Why on earth the timing-control circuit company he worked for was shipping a missile he had no idea, but he was forced to concede that all the paperwork was in order and seemed to follow the correct procedures. It was a real conundrum.
Looking around the room idly as he thought, his gaze fell on the empty desk across from him. Seeing the chair sitting empty, PC standing idle, and mouse resting calmly, David resolved that every problem had a solution and breathed a happy sigh. If he’d come through the other side of the redundancy process which had mercifully delivered him from Jane Wyling, let alone having survived years of working alongside the ogre, then he’d be able to sell a Stinger missile as a strictly civil export without breaking a sweat.
John Morris had been dreading this moment. Pens littered the workspace in front of him where idle spinning had gone awry and thrown them down. The collar of his polo shirt was damp from nervous chewing. Even the arrow keys on his laptop were beginning to wear down as he cycled back and forward through menus, waiting for the permissions table to update and the screen to refresh.
As an IT support officer, the grand title bestowed upon him to grant a sense of authority which his role sorely lacked, he wasn’t really up-to-date with office politics. It wasn’t just the small scale campaigns for control of the kettle or ownership of the coffee pod rota either; the large-scale movements of personnel, reorganisation of departments, and deliberate setting of unachievable budgets were a mystery to him until a co-worker happened to mention the news offhand while he plugged their monitor in properly.
An awful lot of things around the office ‘worked fine yesterday’ and then spontaneously died the following day without any intervention. Cables wrapped around phones and coffee mugs leaning against sockets were completely unrelated, he was assured, and the wires must simply have fallen free from their connectors. It was impressive that the breeze from the air conditioning unit was able to undo the screws on either side of so many monitor cables, but with every employee declaring their own innocence in moving equipment around, it was the only remaining explanation.
One piece of office news, however, had made its way to him with unwelcome haste and even less welcome content. He hadn’t even learned it whilst cleaning jam out of someone’s mouse; Shirley Bennet had come directly to him to pass on the message. Jane Wyling would need to have her credentials and permissions adjusted for a move from export control to consumables procurement immediately. She would be expecting to log in later that same morning, and his name would be given out if she asked.
Unfair wasn’t the word; Shirley had just declared nuclear war on a shrew who had no notion of international conflict at all.
Nearly every access level of every software platform the company used needed to be adjusted, and her whole profile migrated from one system to another, in barely an hour. It shouldn’t have been hard at all, but of course Jane had refused to update her network profile when requested last year, so all the data had to be input and updated manually; right there and then. But did her culpability for the long lead-time associated with updating her credentials mean that she would cut IT some slack about it? No chance. John’s head was on the chopping block, and Jane was never without an axe.
Working with the fury of a man trying to avoid a conversation with Satan’s agent of frustration, John’s fingers had danced across the keyboard all morning. They circled in convoluted patterns, hopping from key-to-key and entering passwords in a blur of flesh and bone. A deity of network privileges, John granted or denied permission in order to shape every aspect of Jane’s professional life. He was the architect of her fate and the sculptor of her world, smoothing off the corners of that which she didn’t need to see, and inserting thick stone cliffs between her and that with which she must not be allowed to tinker.
Now, sitting in quiet, tense anticipation after the frenzy of activity had reached its completion, John waited for the updates to be fully cascaded through the system, hoping with his whole being that it would happen before Jane marched in to see him. To say that she wasn’t the easiest colleague to work for was like saying that a bucket of wet sand wasn’t the easiest car to drive; it wasn’t so much an understatement as a situation which lacked all the fundamental characteristics to be possible, or even comprehensible.
Typically, these updates took up to an hour. A digital clock on the corner of his desk told John that he’d been waiting for thirty-two minutes so far, so he was just over half-way through the dangerous mire. If he’d only known what was at stake, he would have come in and made the changes over the weekend. Of all the hot potatoes to be thrown first thing on a Monday, this was the one which could burn him the most.
The phone had remained dormant and silent all morning. From anyone else he would assume that they weren’t chasing too hard for the work to be done, but in Jane’s case it probably meant that she couldn’t find the phone number without access to the network. As unpleasant as a call from Jane would be, if it stopped her from coming there directly then John would have accepted it gladly. At least he would be able to roll his eyes without fear of recrimination.
Two more minutes passed in blessed isolation. John tapped the end of a pen against his desk and tapped the refresh key a few more times, the wait physically painful for him. Amid the tapping and the clicking, however, another sound echoed along the hall. It was a Newton’s Cradle made from damp wood. It was a hippo wearing clogs. It was the thundering stride of Jane Wyling expecting her problems to have been solved before she’d even asked for help.
John sat up in his seat and reflexively looked for a way out, but there was no easy route for escape. Realistically that should have set off alarm bells for the quality of the fire evacuation process, but all he could think about was the impending drudgery.
“Hello?” Jane said as she stormed through the door, like a hurricane of indignation.
“Hi.” John answered apprehensively. There was no point in offering any more of a response; it wouldn’t make any difference.
“What’s taking so long with my login?” Jane demanded, offering none of the information required for someone to address her concerns. Slapping cause and effect squarely in the cheek, John gave a relevant answer regardless, based on his prior knowledge.
“In about half an hour it should all be live.”
“I need it sooner.” Jane exaggerated, to the point of outright deception. “Make it happen.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. I’ve done everything I c-“ John tried, appealing to a sense of reason which Jane didn’t possess.
“Doesn’t work is right. What do we pay you for? Fix it!”
“I’ve updated your profile, but it takes some time for the server to catch up wi-“
“Then make it go faster! Plug another one of your machines in or something.” She instructed him, waving a finger around at various unrelated items of electronics on his desk. John briefly considered plugging in another mouse and claiming it would all be done in 15 minutes, but that would only cause her to come back in a quarter of an hour, even angrier.
“Doesn’t work like that either.” He told her wearily.
“You people really do try my patience. I’m sorry, but it has to be said.” She claimed, although it had no need to be said at all. “What good is all this IT if it stops me from getting my work done?”
“Why don’t you keep trying your login, then? It will update faster if it knows you’re eager. Ten times a minute should do it.” John said drily.
“You want me to sit there and type that out every…” she did some maths on her fingers “ten seconds?!” her fingers were awful at arithmetic.
“However fast you can do it will help.”
“Hmph, there’s no need to take that tone with me. But fine, I will do it myself, like I have to do everything else around here.” She huffed. Turning on her heel she stomped away again, and John breathed a slightly guilty breath of relief. Giving her pointless actions to take in the vain hope that it might help wasn’t strictly in line with his normal workplace code of ethics, but then again keeping Jane around would count as self-harm, and the company wouldn’t like that at all.
Jane tried her keyboard again and found that its adhesion hadn’t decreased since the last time. There was simply no way that she was going to sit there and type her network details in on such a filthy piece of equipment. And the fact that no-one in the office seemed to have a stock of cleaning wipes sickened her deeply. She could always rely on borrowing some from the other export controllers, but now there was no-one to lend her a thing; they were probably expecting her to get some herself, the vultures.
Jane looked again at Sarah's empty desk. She had had an elegant upright mouse, a fancy wrist support, and a shiny, spotless, ergonomic keyboard. There was no sense in letting it go unused, and it certainly wouldn't help matters if Jane got RSI from improperly supported wrists. In the face of such unquestionable arguments it was settled; she’d help herself to Sarah’s equipment, especially her gloriously non-adhesive keyboard, and set about repeatedly typing her details until they worked. It would be a morning well spent after all.
Standing once more from her stiff-wheeled chair, Jane stomped across the carpet to Sarah Jones’ treasure trove of appealing office equipment. As was typical of Sarah, the desk had been left immaculate; the surface was bare of any paperwork or crumbs, stationery was sitting neatly in a compartmentalised tub, the mouse and keyboard were arranged perfectly squarely in front of the monitor, and the photograph of her ugly husband had been stashed away for courtesy’s sake. Jane was grateful for not having to look at his face every time she walked past.
Thin black cables trailed away from the rear of the keyboard and mouse, leading Jane’s eye on a merry chase around to the rear of the computer. Due to the layout of the desks the computers were back-to-back, rendering it impossible to see exactly where the cables plugged in. With her unpractised and cumbersome hands extended as far as they could reach, Jane fumbled at the wires in an attempt to free them from their interface with the computer, but blind tugging proved as ineffectual as asking that worthless creep Andrew for his login details earlier. With every pinch and yank, the cables pulled taut against the corner of the computer but held firm.
Andrew and Gillian looked up, hearing the results of Jane’s fervour. As much as they were displeased by her actions, neither one dared to make eye contact or question her. Avoiding conversation with Jane was important, even at the best of times, but under the current circumstances it was completely imperative. Social revulsion and circumstantial pity blended themselves together into a perfect defensive mesh, permitting all manner of unprofessional behaviour by virtue of ‘giving her some slack’. And even if slack were to be taken away, neither of them felt like they were paid enough to bear the brunt of her indignation.
Jane shot a glance over towards Andrew and Gillian, then pretended that she hadn’t noticed them. She also pretended that she hadn’t been doing anything untoward at Sarah’s desk, running her finger along the edge of it as if checking for dust and then returning to her own seat.
Glistening in the office lights, the unpleasant keyboard leered up at her mockingly. It dared her to use it and feel grimy all day. Whoever had spitefully and deliberately coated it with something disgusting must have been having a field day, Jane thought. In fact, she began to suspect that Sarah had thought it would be funny to wire that keyboard and mouse up so that they couldn’t be removed, specifically to wind her up. Andrew probably smeared jam over her keyboard. Gillian must have gummed up the wheels of her chair. These sorts of things were always happening to her; always.
With a deflated sigh, Jane sagged into her chair slightly. Nothing like this would have happened to her back in export control, she thought. Her martyr complex was engaged in outright war with melancholy about no longer working in export control, but somehow it allowed her to sustain the paradox of constant historical victimisation alongside the glory of the good old days. It ensured that no matter what happened, and whatever a colleague happened to say, Jane had some tenuous justification or other to turn it against herself and launch onto the defensive.
All this contrived emotional turmoil was thirsty work, and Jane noticed that she’d been so dedicated all morning that she’d neglected to have a cup of tea. Actively avoiding everyone else’s gazes, Jane pushed away from her desk, mug in hand, and clomped into the kitchen. If any of those workshy scroungers had caught her eye then they would have wasted no time in demanding that she make them a cup too, ‘while the kettle’s boiled’. But would they ever return the favour? Almost certainly not. In fact, they probably had their own mugs of tea made already. They must have waited until she was out fighting IT for the right to work and then dashed into the kitchen, just to avoid making her a mug too. How hard would it have been to put one extra tea bag in one extra mug and pour water over it? It takes seconds, yet they had still gone out of their way to avoid doing it for her. And they would certainly try to foist the delay onto her instead if they could, trying to make her look bad in front of Shirley for hanging around in the kitchen all day. Although, if any of them ever touched her tea mug then she’d bite their thieving fingers off. And she fully expected that she’d be left to buy milk every time it ran out too. These people were a living nightmare.
Drifting out of her paranoid seething, Jane realised with some surprise that she had managed to perform the whole tea making process already. Seeing the hot brown fluid in front of her, she felt like she’d lost some important leisurely daydreaming time. No, not lost; she’d been cheated of it by the machinations and conspiracies of her co-workers. Not one to be taken advantage of, she resolved to take a long lunch break as recompense.
Back at her desk, Jane sipped at her tea and looked down at her keyboard. That rat from IT wanted her to type her login details over and over again, probably knowing full well that her fingers would be left disconcertingly sticky. It was definitely worth another go at getting Sarah’s.
Now infused with the power of hot beverages, Jane took another look at the wires trailing round to the back of Sarah’s computer. With a Herculean effort she leaned forwards until her hand disappeared from sight behind the machine and found the USB connector. It was a strain to keep herself elongated to that degree, feet dangling slightly, but such was the depth of her dedication to work that she refused to give in. Wiggling it gently, Jane freed the USB from its socket and allowed herself to relax back down to the floor with a sense of achievement.
Panting slightly despite the pedestrian nature of her physical exertion, Jane triumphantly lifted Sarah's ergonomic keyboard from Sarah’s domain and strode back to her own desk. Placing it delicately to one side, she traced her own keyboard cable back and saw that she would have to brave a second desk-dangling battle. Seeing how unhelpful that IT monkey had been earlier, Jane strongly suspected, nay knew, that this had been done deliberately to make her struggle. It was obvious that she was too short to unplug a keyboard when the PC was so far back on the desk, so the only explanation was that it had been spitefully positioned in order to cause her trouble. They hadn’t reckoned on her extreme determination however.
With another heroic bounce, Jane levered herself onto the desk and yanked at her keyboard’s cable roughly, hoping for a speedier de-coupling than the previous keyboard had enjoyed. With a ping the USB connector came free, but it was accompanied by a tearing sensation. As Jane pulled the wire back to herself, she saw that the cable had frayed away from the plug, as if it had somehow been subjected to a sharp force. Clearly not contented with putting the plug well out of her way, the saboteurs had also given her a faulty piece of hardware which they had deliberately weakened. There was no end to the depth of the conspiracy against her.
Casting the sticky mess of keys to one side, Jane moved her new ergonomic acquisition into place and prepared for another courageous campaign onto the desk surface. When she guided the stolen connector around the rear of the PC however, she found that it was significantly harder to plug something in blind than it was to yank harshly at a cable. Fumbling with the small plug between her fingers, Jane tapped, then jabbed, and then slammed the keyboard’s USB into roughly where she thought it ought to go, finding against all the odds that she kept missing. With her body rapidly growing tired and her usually limitless patience wearing thin, Jane slammed herself back down with the frown of a thousand failures.
“Andrew!” she bellowed in her rage. “I need help with this.”
Andrew looked up from his monitor, feeling an equal mixture of confusion, dread, and disappointment. He’d hoped that his previous entanglement would be the last, and that ignoring Jane’s blatant looting of Sarah’s desk would earn him respite from her attention. But Jane was always the antithesis of hope.
“I’m a bit busy right now, Jane.” He answered, mistaking her for a rational human being.
“Oh for goodness sake it’ll only take a minute! I just want you to reach something for me. It would be nice to actually get some work done.” She shouted, accusation lacing her tone.
“Go on, Andrew.” Gillian muttered to him. He looked back with surprise and betrayal in his eyes. “I know she’s being a bit of a cow but the redundancy probably wasn’t nice for her.” she persisted.
Andrew sighed with resignation.
“Yeah… I suppose… I just don’t want to set a precedent that-“
“Are you coming or not?” Jane shouted over impatiently.
“-that I’ll just drop everything for her.” he finished, before dropping everything for her. “Alright.” He said to the irate keyboard thief.
Andrew walked over beside Jane and held his hands out to take the keyboard from her.
“Don’t break it, alright?” she said, keeping it away from him and shooting him a stern look. “The plug goes in the back of the PC box thing there, on this side somewhere.”
“Yeah it’s OK, I know where to put it.”
“Alright! No need to bite my head off. Condescending much?” Jane snapped, throwing up a barrier against his unprovoked attack.
Andrew stood silently, unsure of what to say. Part of him wanted to apologise for patronising her unintentionally. Another part of him wanted to jam a pen into her throat.
“Would you hand me the keyboard, please?” he asked, ignoring both sides of his internal debate.
“Take it, then.” Jane said, thrusting it towards him.
Andrew lifted the keyboard from her sweaty hands and leaned over the desk. With expert precision he found the correct port and plugged the USB into place easily.
“OK, there you go.”
“There, wasn’t so hard to help, was it?” Jane said admonishingly. It proved that he had been withholding assistance from her, and the speed with which he’d plugged the keyboard in was highly suspicious. He’d said himself that he knew exactly where to plug it in, implying that he’d done this before; it was tacit admission that he’d deliberately put a sticky keyboard in place on her PC and frayed the cable to sabotage her.
Andrew stood, a little shell-shocked at Jane’s continued obstinacy, and still waited naively for the thanks that would never come.
“That’s all, you can get back to your ‘busy’ schedule now.” Jane dismissed, spelling it out for him.
Involuntarily Andrew rolled his eyes before turning on his heels and walking back through the office. Gillian looked up at him, and mouthed ‘Thank you’ as the broken man took his seat again. They both kept their gazes fixed on their respective work as Jane tossed the sticky, broken keyboard from which she had freed herself onto Sarah’s desk messily. The less they acknowledged of her behaviour the better, for the sake of plausible deniability if nothing else.
Lunchtime rolled around on its own schedule, taking a lackadaisical stroll through morning rather than storming on towards midday. When it finally arrived, Jane pushed Sarah’s freaky keyboard away from herself and stood up, making a great display of stretching her legs and back. She’d been sitting at that desk for over twenty minutes, and worked solidly for at least fifteen of them, so she wanted everyone else in the office to be damned aware of her dedication. To cap it all, that working time didn’t even count the period she’d spent furiously entering her login credentials and trying to get onto the network. Successfully logging in did mean, of course, that her computer wanted to go through some kind of first-time setup routine which she didn’t understand. Getting though that entirely automated process had necessitated another couple of tea breaks.
Regardless, the moment that the clock on her computer had ticked over to 12.30 she was on her feet and ready to go. Dedication was one thing, but she wouldn’t be throwing her own personal time away for the company. In fact, she refused to spend a second of it on their premises, instead opting to take her lunch to the car. She told herself, and anyone else she happened to see on the way out, that it was about giving herself a space which was completely separate from the office. Everyone else had suspected that it was because everyone else avoided sitting nearby to her if she stayed indoors, but allowing other people’s actions to change her behaviour didn’t sound like Jane at all.
As soon as Jane had disappeared, Andrew flopped backwards in his chair and shot a distressed look at Gillian.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to cope with this. She’s just so obnoxious. How does she still work here?” He vented finally.
“Maybe Jane is just stressed out from being forced to move and not being able to get on with things. I’d find it very difficult to believe that she could act that way all the time and still keep her employment.” Gillian responded without looking away from her work.
“She was literally just made redundant from her previous job.” Andrew pointed out.
“That was for downsizing reasons.”
“It’ll be interesting to see if they actually get any less work done.”
“Give her a chance to settle in. She might change your mind.” Gillian said with her usual insistence on giving people the benefit of the doubt. It frustrated Andrew to no end; he didn’t get any validation of his views, and he was forced to feel guilty for not being as good of a person as Gillian. “But I understand why you feel that way now. It was unfair of her to speak to you like that, but try not to let it get to you.” She offered, reinforcing Andrew’s sensations of guilt in a wave of empathetic acknowledgement.
“I’ll do my best.” Andrew conceded, accepting that he might never again get his own way.
All around the office, a post-lunch haze obscured reality. Gone was the ill-focused delirium of a hunger-addled workforce, and in its place had crept the revitalised energy of blood-sugar on one side, and sleepy full-stomached restfulness on the other.
Rolling into the misty array of quiet afternoon work a full minute late, having claimed back her tea-making daydream time, Jane settled at her desk again to prepare for even more productivity. Twenty minutes of work beyond ruffling feathers in IT and looting a keyboard wasn’t to be sniffed at, but Jane knew that she had a little more left in her.
After a full five minutes, just as Jane’s second wind was fading, Shirley strode back into the office.
Andrew buried himself in his work, desperate to avoid eye contact with Shirley. If it was inevitable that his boss would demand an update from him then he could accept it, but there was no reason to invite a conversation with her into his life if it wasn't otherwise going to happen. It would be like pre-emptively swallowing washing up liquid on the anticipation that someone was going to force a dirty teacup down his throat. Thankfully, he determined from the wooden clunking of her heels even through the carpet, she stopped short of his desk, right behind Jane's.
"How are you getting on, Jane?" She asked. An amateur would look at Shirley's body language and see a relaxed, casual, manager looking after her new recruit. But Jane's expert eye saw a viper waiting to strike and inject foul venom.
“Fine. Getting myself acquainted with the inventory software and the tracking process.” Jane told her, standing her ground against the flagrant assault.
“Good, good.” Shirley replied, sounding disinterested. Her eyes drifted down to rest on Jane’s hands, or more accurately the pilfered computing accessory on which they were resting. With a slight suspicious frown she looked over at Sarah’s desk and saw a damaged-looking normal keyboard sitting upside down on the surface.
Shirley stared, feeling anger boil up through her body like an unattended pot of rice, starchy water racing to spill onto the stove before the inattentive chef notices. Did the insane old bag really think that this would go unnoticed? Getting that frankly extortionate keyboard for Sarah had been like pulling someone’s pelvis out through their nose, only with more resistance at every level. Sarah had been whining about potential RSI or some such nonsense for months, taking every opportunity to bring it up or rub at her wrists, until Shirley had finally relented and raised the issue with Terry, her direct superior. He’d been his usual knob-head self about it, but gave in on the grounds of avoiding legal action, or illegal action. Any action at all, really, was something Terry worked hard to avoid. So the request had finally been raised but a specific model had to be chosen before the purchase request could be taken to procurement, and only from one of the company’s preferred vendors. No-one really understood how to achieve preferential status for a vendor, and as far as Shirley could tell it was just a matter of having all prices marked up by around thirty percent, but the list of vendors existed nonetheless and so she had to pick one. Once she had forced her body through that hoop, IT had to approve the choice and check for compatibility, which would for some reason take a full week after the point of receiving the keyboard on site.
Sarah had joked that the keyboard would finally arrive just after she left for maternity. As the weeks kept passing, however, it wasn’t a joke anymore. Now it was preparing to be a ‘welcome back’ gift, or at least it had been before Jane had swiped it for herself.
“What are you doing with that keyboard?” Shirley snapped suddenly.
“I’m using it to type.” Jane answered unintentionally smarmily.
“You know exactly what I’m asking and I don’t appreciate that kind of unprofessional attitude.” Shirley barked.
“I told you earlier that the one here was sticky. I’m not typing with a sticky keyboard.”
“No, you’re typing with a stolen one instead. You saw that Sarah had a nicer one and just decided to take it and put it on your PC.”
“I didn’t! Andrew did it for me.” Jane defended, throwing Andrew bodily under the bus she herself had flagged down.
The silence in the office could have absorbed every New Year’s Eve cheer around the globe quite comfortably, and still had sufficient quietness left over to be eerily quiet afterwards. Andrew slowly raised his wide-eyed face up to look at Shirley, a shivering child staring into the black abyss of hopelessness knowing that they had just broken their mother’s prized crystal fruit bowl.
“You did what?!” Fire and ash erupted from the mouth of Mount Shirley.
“I didn’t take it from Sarah’s desk, I was against the whole thing!” Andrew pleaded courageously.
“Are you lying to me Jane?” Shirley growled.
“No!”
“She’d already taken it, I just helped to get the plug in because I could reach.” Andrew explained.
“That couldn’t be further from the point!” the apparition of fury bellowed. “We don’t steal things from one another’s desks, especially during maternity leave!”
“I didn’t steal it, I ju-”
“I don’t want to hear it, Andrew. I suggest that you return to your desk and get on with something more productive. And you,” she said, turning to Jane “will use what you are given and raise it to me formally if there is an issue. You will not just take what you please from around the office. Is that clear? I didn’t have to offer you this role, and so help me if you make my life harder I will take it away like export wanted me to. Do you hear me?”
Another silence hung in the air. Where the first had been born of fear, this one was voiceless horror that someone had remarked on the elephant which had, until now, gone unmentioned despite its hulking presence in the room. The only thing more awkward than having to deal with Jane was discussing exactly why they had to deal with her. Gillian had skirted around the issue when asking Andrew for tolerance. Andrew had let it justify computer accessory redistribution. And Jane had hidden behind it, although she still would have behaved just as badly without it. But Shirley just dropped it into the room, allowing it to smash through the ceiling tiles, shatter the lightbulbs, and crush Jane’s desk under the weight of humiliation.
“Yes. I understand. Thank you.” Jane said quietly. Andrew would have sworn that he’d celebrate the day he saw Jane give up fighting lost causes, or just accept a logical statement without twisting it into a direct attack on herself. But hearing her so defeated gave him no pleasure. She’d finally accepted that her employer held all the cards, and that she wasn’t the lynch pin holding them all together. Someone had just burst that bubble dramatically, and pointed out that, if anything, she was an inconvenience of which they would like all-too-much to dispose.
“Good. Don’t let me see this again.” Shirley warned, before turning on her heel and striding away.
No-one had a thing to say, and the office filled itself with quiet tapping.
With nary an accusation of vile conspiracy, the afternoon passed. Perhaps as penance for her typographic kleptomania, Shirley had ordered Jane to take all of the old paper archives and scan them onto the network. It was little better than busy-work, the lowest priority of everything, but it needed doing and Jane was being told in no uncertain terms that her time was the least important of everyone’s. After hours of scanning, a little spark lit up in the back of Jane’s mind, and postulated that Shirley must be jealous. She was scared that Jane’s natural leadership would outshine her own. That was almost certainly it; Shirley had wanted to set up a power play to keep Jane down, and planted the two keyboards as a trap.
Jane heaved several folders’ worth of paper into her arms from the scanner and staggered towards the shredder which was, for reasons unknown to anyone, on the opposite side of the room. Legs wobbling slightly and bowing outwards, Jane took uneven and poorly balanced steps through the room, individual loose leaves of paper fluttering to the ground behind her as she went. Keeping an eye all around for those vultures who sought to profit from her misfortune, Jane noticed a clock hanging on the wall above Sarah’s desk and saw with welcome surprise that it was 5.00pm; she’d made it. She had survived another day of thanklessly keeping the company afloat, despite those forces which sought to stop her.
Jane dropped the papers heavily onto Andrew’s desk, spilling them across his keyboard in an untidy pile as he typed, and mixing in with the important reports he was summarising at the time. To the soundtrack of his aggrieved moans Jane grabbed her fur-lined jacket from the coatrack, moving with twice the speed and energy she’d been able to muster earlier in the day.
In spite of the machinations of everyone else against her, IT’s attempting to keep her out of the network, Andrew helping to sabotage her keyboard, and the blatant envy flowing from her new manager, Jane had managed to weather the storm and escape. Once again she had defended her freedom and was on the way home. She could relax, and she could recover from the toil of the day.
When she got home, Gerald would listen with rapt interest to the tales of victory Jane brought with her, and agree with the astute assessments of her colleagues’ more spiteful natures. They would share a meal together to celebrate her resilience. And then, after an evening of riveting televised drama, morning would come and she would be back; refreshed and ready. She would face the perils of another day as a victim of all the company wished to throw her way. But despite the efforts made to bring her down she would withstand everything yet again, she would put on her brave, silent martyr’s face, and she would keep fighting on.
"Whatever Roger had on his hands probably. Your old login won't work on this system yet, so you will need to borrow someone's." Shirley replied disinterestedly. She was giving Jane the on-boarding process, but only by throwing her blindly into the cargo hold.
"Can I get some wipes or something?"
"I would recommend asking around to see who'll let you use their credentials. Everyone will probably need their own all day to get any work done though, so that's something you will have to address." Shirley continued, ignoring Jane’s question.
"Uh, how?"
"That's the spirit, ask the tough questions."
Shirley accentuated the point with a pat on the shoulder as she started to turn and walk away.
"Don't just ignore me!” Jane commanded. “I have a sticky keyboard and I can't get onto the system."
"If you can't get on then you won’t need the keyboard, so the stickiness won't bother you. Better solve the big problems first like login details. Time is passing and you’ve still not got anything done." Shirley called back without looking.
Jane tried to argue but Shirley and her ill-fitting skirt and ugly blouse combo were out of the door. Jane had always considered Shirley to be a bit of a bitch, but now she was confirmed to be unhelpful too. At least she could surge into any future engagements with a sense of justified obstinacy; her second favourite kind of obstinacy.
With an exaggerated shake of the head, causing her short bob of hair to jiggle slightly, Jane crossed her arms and stared at the unusable work station. When that proved too meagre of a gesture to convey her feelings, she let out a heavy sigh to add some much-needed gravitas. Nobody working nearby took any notice.
After a few minutes of highly competent sulking, Jane determined that she would have to start solving these problems all by herself as usual; no-one else was going to do anything about it, just like every other problem she encountered around the office. She wondered why she even bothered some days, slaving away day-in and day-out like that for a bunch of ungrateful dunderheads. It would be no different in this new office to her old one. But eventually Jane would just stop picking up the pieces after them; then they would see what she really did around the office and they’d all be sorry. There’d be spilled sugar all over the kitchen worktop, teabags in the sink, and no passive-aggressive notes to keep them in line. Then they’d finally appreciate her, just when it was too late.
Pursing her lips, Jane stood up from the paltry desk-offering which had been made to her and looked for a likely candidate to give her a system login. Her immediate desk-neighbour, much to her displeasure, was Jerry Laine. Currently he was sitting and sniffing to himself like an overgrown child with a cold whilst he leaned forwards and stared into a monitor. White light reflected from his over-sized, brown-framed glasses. Engaging in conversation with Jerry was deeply undesirable at the best of times, let alone when she needed something from him; it’d require her to be nice to him, and then she’d never get away from the cretin.
Looking further afield, beyond Sarah Jones’ empty desk, was Gillian Kleiner-Smith. She was harmless enough but not likely to give up any system information without first clearing it with Shirley explicitly, who would then sneer at Jane for not sorting herself out autonomously.
Gillian sat next to Andrew Mure, a balding, late forties stock co-ordinator who seemed to have no drive to go further in his career and even less understanding of how to do his job. He might be a good source of credentials.
Jane stomped her way quietly across the stained and worn carpet until she reached Andrew’s desk, to the soundtrack of clattering keyboards and furious mouse clicks. No-one else’s keyboard sounded sticky. Why was it just hers? Someone probably thought it would be funny; heard about her moving into Roger's old desk and smeared something horrid on it. Well, it was unprofessional and just the sort of thing she expected from this lot.
By the time she got to Andrew’s desk, Jane had worked herself up into a healthy indignant strop, perfect for demanding an unreasonable amount of help.
“Good morning Andrew.” She snapped, putting on a brave face despite the despicable treatment to which she had been subjected thus far.
“Hm?” Andrew said, snapping out of the concentration he’d been directing towards his monitor. “Oh, morning Jane. How can I help?” he asked uncertainly; he was fairly sure that Jane worked in export control, and there were very few reasons for anyone from that department to visit his desk. All of the reasons which did exist were bad ones.
“I need your login details. Mine don’t work on this network yet.” Jane told him matter-of-factly.
Andrew regarded her with quiet conservatism. Export and security were closely linked departments and he suspected that someone had put Jane up to the task of testing him. Giving out login details was strictly against IT policy, and punishable by thumbscrews if his manager found out. Although Jane was generally the last person anyone would ask for help, even in the professional capacity in which she was expected to provide it, there was no other explanation for her request.
“I’m afraid I can’t give out my details to anyone, it’s a security risk.” He replied, waiting for the inevitable bored acceptance of the correct answer.
“I am not a security risk! I’ve been here for four years; that’s loyalty. Not that the company shows me any back. Do you really think I’m going to start selling secrets or causing problems? Let me have your credentials.” Jane spat back at Andrew. This was just typical of him, and of everyone else for that matter. Deliberately trying to get in her way and hiding behind policy to do it.
“No-one is allowed to give out their details, even to other employees.” Andrew recited from memory, a little nervously. Jane was turning redder.
“But I need them to log in because I can’t do any work otherwise!”
“I wouldn’t be able to do work either if I let you log in as me.” He counter-pointed.
“That’s a selfish attitude to take.” Jane snapped angrily “We’re supposed to be a team down here aren’t we?”
“What do you mean? Are you moving down here?” Andrew asked with confusion.
“Of course I am! Didn’t you get the memo? Out of the loop, are we?” she sneered back spitefully, eager to put him on the back foot.
“I don’t see anything about that in my inbox.” Andrew informed her after a quick search.
“Well I decided to move so I’m here, get over it. Now give me your details so I can get on. Shirley wanted you to give me your information and she won’t be happy if you don’t.”
Andrew’s already low confidence in the situation plummeted further. That definitely didn’t sound like something Shirley would want him to do; especially not after forcing him to memorise the entire IT security policy due to the ‘Free Money from Government’ email scandal.
“She hasn’t mentioned that to me…”
“Because she wanted me to tell you myself, of course. Now get on with it.” Jane was starting to shake gently in frustration at the failure of her expert negotiation skills.
“I… I’m going to double check with Shirley.” Andrew said, starting to stand up. Jane cursed internally; he was being such a Gillian about this.
“No! She doesn’t want to be bothered. She has an important meeting to be in.”
“Does she?” he tapped quickly on his keyboard. “There’s nothing in her calendar. I can see her over there in her office, too. We’ll just get this cleared up.”
“No. Leave it. I don’t need your help anyway.” She dismissively grumbled. “I need some wipes to clean my keyboard of whatever that animal Roger left all over it.”
Andrew looked at Jane’s outstretched hand.
“I don’t have any baby wipes or anything, sorry.”
Jane let out a low groan.
“Useless…” she muttered, walking away.
Upstairs in export control, David rested his head in one hand and pondered over the item in front of him. He was being asked to declare that, to the best of his knowledge, the package being exported that afternoon was in no way related to, or intended for use in, any military application. It was a standard question which he had answered many times, but it placed a significant duty of care on his shoulders, and each time he had to make the statement he conducted his work with due caution and genuine concern. Inevitably everything was above board, but David never let that dull his enthusiasm or work ethic.
This time, however, reading about the single Stinger missile which was being despatched overseas, he was struggling to sign the authorisation form in good conscience. Ballistic ordnance seemed like exactly the sort of thing which would be used in a military application, and in fact he would go as far as saying that it had incredibly few applications which weren’t military. Why on earth the timing-control circuit company he worked for was shipping a missile he had no idea, but he was forced to concede that all the paperwork was in order and seemed to follow the correct procedures. It was a real conundrum.
Looking around the room idly as he thought, his gaze fell on the empty desk across from him. Seeing the chair sitting empty, PC standing idle, and mouse resting calmly, David resolved that every problem had a solution and breathed a happy sigh. If he’d come through the other side of the redundancy process which had mercifully delivered him from Jane Wyling, let alone having survived years of working alongside the ogre, then he’d be able to sell a Stinger missile as a strictly civil export without breaking a sweat.
John Morris had been dreading this moment. Pens littered the workspace in front of him where idle spinning had gone awry and thrown them down. The collar of his polo shirt was damp from nervous chewing. Even the arrow keys on his laptop were beginning to wear down as he cycled back and forward through menus, waiting for the permissions table to update and the screen to refresh.
As an IT support officer, the grand title bestowed upon him to grant a sense of authority which his role sorely lacked, he wasn’t really up-to-date with office politics. It wasn’t just the small scale campaigns for control of the kettle or ownership of the coffee pod rota either; the large-scale movements of personnel, reorganisation of departments, and deliberate setting of unachievable budgets were a mystery to him until a co-worker happened to mention the news offhand while he plugged their monitor in properly.
An awful lot of things around the office ‘worked fine yesterday’ and then spontaneously died the following day without any intervention. Cables wrapped around phones and coffee mugs leaning against sockets were completely unrelated, he was assured, and the wires must simply have fallen free from their connectors. It was impressive that the breeze from the air conditioning unit was able to undo the screws on either side of so many monitor cables, but with every employee declaring their own innocence in moving equipment around, it was the only remaining explanation.
One piece of office news, however, had made its way to him with unwelcome haste and even less welcome content. He hadn’t even learned it whilst cleaning jam out of someone’s mouse; Shirley Bennet had come directly to him to pass on the message. Jane Wyling would need to have her credentials and permissions adjusted for a move from export control to consumables procurement immediately. She would be expecting to log in later that same morning, and his name would be given out if she asked.
Unfair wasn’t the word; Shirley had just declared nuclear war on a shrew who had no notion of international conflict at all.
Nearly every access level of every software platform the company used needed to be adjusted, and her whole profile migrated from one system to another, in barely an hour. It shouldn’t have been hard at all, but of course Jane had refused to update her network profile when requested last year, so all the data had to be input and updated manually; right there and then. But did her culpability for the long lead-time associated with updating her credentials mean that she would cut IT some slack about it? No chance. John’s head was on the chopping block, and Jane was never without an axe.
Working with the fury of a man trying to avoid a conversation with Satan’s agent of frustration, John’s fingers had danced across the keyboard all morning. They circled in convoluted patterns, hopping from key-to-key and entering passwords in a blur of flesh and bone. A deity of network privileges, John granted or denied permission in order to shape every aspect of Jane’s professional life. He was the architect of her fate and the sculptor of her world, smoothing off the corners of that which she didn’t need to see, and inserting thick stone cliffs between her and that with which she must not be allowed to tinker.
Now, sitting in quiet, tense anticipation after the frenzy of activity had reached its completion, John waited for the updates to be fully cascaded through the system, hoping with his whole being that it would happen before Jane marched in to see him. To say that she wasn’t the easiest colleague to work for was like saying that a bucket of wet sand wasn’t the easiest car to drive; it wasn’t so much an understatement as a situation which lacked all the fundamental characteristics to be possible, or even comprehensible.
Typically, these updates took up to an hour. A digital clock on the corner of his desk told John that he’d been waiting for thirty-two minutes so far, so he was just over half-way through the dangerous mire. If he’d only known what was at stake, he would have come in and made the changes over the weekend. Of all the hot potatoes to be thrown first thing on a Monday, this was the one which could burn him the most.
The phone had remained dormant and silent all morning. From anyone else he would assume that they weren’t chasing too hard for the work to be done, but in Jane’s case it probably meant that she couldn’t find the phone number without access to the network. As unpleasant as a call from Jane would be, if it stopped her from coming there directly then John would have accepted it gladly. At least he would be able to roll his eyes without fear of recrimination.
Two more minutes passed in blessed isolation. John tapped the end of a pen against his desk and tapped the refresh key a few more times, the wait physically painful for him. Amid the tapping and the clicking, however, another sound echoed along the hall. It was a Newton’s Cradle made from damp wood. It was a hippo wearing clogs. It was the thundering stride of Jane Wyling expecting her problems to have been solved before she’d even asked for help.
John sat up in his seat and reflexively looked for a way out, but there was no easy route for escape. Realistically that should have set off alarm bells for the quality of the fire evacuation process, but all he could think about was the impending drudgery.
“Hello?” Jane said as she stormed through the door, like a hurricane of indignation.
“Hi.” John answered apprehensively. There was no point in offering any more of a response; it wouldn’t make any difference.
“What’s taking so long with my login?” Jane demanded, offering none of the information required for someone to address her concerns. Slapping cause and effect squarely in the cheek, John gave a relevant answer regardless, based on his prior knowledge.
“In about half an hour it should all be live.”
“I need it sooner.” Jane exaggerated, to the point of outright deception. “Make it happen.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. I’ve done everything I c-“ John tried, appealing to a sense of reason which Jane didn’t possess.
“Doesn’t work is right. What do we pay you for? Fix it!”
“I’ve updated your profile, but it takes some time for the server to catch up wi-“
“Then make it go faster! Plug another one of your machines in or something.” She instructed him, waving a finger around at various unrelated items of electronics on his desk. John briefly considered plugging in another mouse and claiming it would all be done in 15 minutes, but that would only cause her to come back in a quarter of an hour, even angrier.
“Doesn’t work like that either.” He told her wearily.
“You people really do try my patience. I’m sorry, but it has to be said.” She claimed, although it had no need to be said at all. “What good is all this IT if it stops me from getting my work done?”
“Why don’t you keep trying your login, then? It will update faster if it knows you’re eager. Ten times a minute should do it.” John said drily.
“You want me to sit there and type that out every…” she did some maths on her fingers “ten seconds?!” her fingers were awful at arithmetic.
“However fast you can do it will help.”
“Hmph, there’s no need to take that tone with me. But fine, I will do it myself, like I have to do everything else around here.” She huffed. Turning on her heel she stomped away again, and John breathed a slightly guilty breath of relief. Giving her pointless actions to take in the vain hope that it might help wasn’t strictly in line with his normal workplace code of ethics, but then again keeping Jane around would count as self-harm, and the company wouldn’t like that at all.
Jane tried her keyboard again and found that its adhesion hadn’t decreased since the last time. There was simply no way that she was going to sit there and type her network details in on such a filthy piece of equipment. And the fact that no-one in the office seemed to have a stock of cleaning wipes sickened her deeply. She could always rely on borrowing some from the other export controllers, but now there was no-one to lend her a thing; they were probably expecting her to get some herself, the vultures.
Jane looked again at Sarah's empty desk. She had had an elegant upright mouse, a fancy wrist support, and a shiny, spotless, ergonomic keyboard. There was no sense in letting it go unused, and it certainly wouldn't help matters if Jane got RSI from improperly supported wrists. In the face of such unquestionable arguments it was settled; she’d help herself to Sarah’s equipment, especially her gloriously non-adhesive keyboard, and set about repeatedly typing her details until they worked. It would be a morning well spent after all.
Standing once more from her stiff-wheeled chair, Jane stomped across the carpet to Sarah Jones’ treasure trove of appealing office equipment. As was typical of Sarah, the desk had been left immaculate; the surface was bare of any paperwork or crumbs, stationery was sitting neatly in a compartmentalised tub, the mouse and keyboard were arranged perfectly squarely in front of the monitor, and the photograph of her ugly husband had been stashed away for courtesy’s sake. Jane was grateful for not having to look at his face every time she walked past.
Thin black cables trailed away from the rear of the keyboard and mouse, leading Jane’s eye on a merry chase around to the rear of the computer. Due to the layout of the desks the computers were back-to-back, rendering it impossible to see exactly where the cables plugged in. With her unpractised and cumbersome hands extended as far as they could reach, Jane fumbled at the wires in an attempt to free them from their interface with the computer, but blind tugging proved as ineffectual as asking that worthless creep Andrew for his login details earlier. With every pinch and yank, the cables pulled taut against the corner of the computer but held firm.
Andrew and Gillian looked up, hearing the results of Jane’s fervour. As much as they were displeased by her actions, neither one dared to make eye contact or question her. Avoiding conversation with Jane was important, even at the best of times, but under the current circumstances it was completely imperative. Social revulsion and circumstantial pity blended themselves together into a perfect defensive mesh, permitting all manner of unprofessional behaviour by virtue of ‘giving her some slack’. And even if slack were to be taken away, neither of them felt like they were paid enough to bear the brunt of her indignation.
Jane shot a glance over towards Andrew and Gillian, then pretended that she hadn’t noticed them. She also pretended that she hadn’t been doing anything untoward at Sarah’s desk, running her finger along the edge of it as if checking for dust and then returning to her own seat.
Glistening in the office lights, the unpleasant keyboard leered up at her mockingly. It dared her to use it and feel grimy all day. Whoever had spitefully and deliberately coated it with something disgusting must have been having a field day, Jane thought. In fact, she began to suspect that Sarah had thought it would be funny to wire that keyboard and mouse up so that they couldn’t be removed, specifically to wind her up. Andrew probably smeared jam over her keyboard. Gillian must have gummed up the wheels of her chair. These sorts of things were always happening to her; always.
With a deflated sigh, Jane sagged into her chair slightly. Nothing like this would have happened to her back in export control, she thought. Her martyr complex was engaged in outright war with melancholy about no longer working in export control, but somehow it allowed her to sustain the paradox of constant historical victimisation alongside the glory of the good old days. It ensured that no matter what happened, and whatever a colleague happened to say, Jane had some tenuous justification or other to turn it against herself and launch onto the defensive.
All this contrived emotional turmoil was thirsty work, and Jane noticed that she’d been so dedicated all morning that she’d neglected to have a cup of tea. Actively avoiding everyone else’s gazes, Jane pushed away from her desk, mug in hand, and clomped into the kitchen. If any of those workshy scroungers had caught her eye then they would have wasted no time in demanding that she make them a cup too, ‘while the kettle’s boiled’. But would they ever return the favour? Almost certainly not. In fact, they probably had their own mugs of tea made already. They must have waited until she was out fighting IT for the right to work and then dashed into the kitchen, just to avoid making her a mug too. How hard would it have been to put one extra tea bag in one extra mug and pour water over it? It takes seconds, yet they had still gone out of their way to avoid doing it for her. And they would certainly try to foist the delay onto her instead if they could, trying to make her look bad in front of Shirley for hanging around in the kitchen all day. Although, if any of them ever touched her tea mug then she’d bite their thieving fingers off. And she fully expected that she’d be left to buy milk every time it ran out too. These people were a living nightmare.
Drifting out of her paranoid seething, Jane realised with some surprise that she had managed to perform the whole tea making process already. Seeing the hot brown fluid in front of her, she felt like she’d lost some important leisurely daydreaming time. No, not lost; she’d been cheated of it by the machinations and conspiracies of her co-workers. Not one to be taken advantage of, she resolved to take a long lunch break as recompense.
Back at her desk, Jane sipped at her tea and looked down at her keyboard. That rat from IT wanted her to type her login details over and over again, probably knowing full well that her fingers would be left disconcertingly sticky. It was definitely worth another go at getting Sarah’s.
Now infused with the power of hot beverages, Jane took another look at the wires trailing round to the back of Sarah’s computer. With a Herculean effort she leaned forwards until her hand disappeared from sight behind the machine and found the USB connector. It was a strain to keep herself elongated to that degree, feet dangling slightly, but such was the depth of her dedication to work that she refused to give in. Wiggling it gently, Jane freed the USB from its socket and allowed herself to relax back down to the floor with a sense of achievement.
Panting slightly despite the pedestrian nature of her physical exertion, Jane triumphantly lifted Sarah's ergonomic keyboard from Sarah’s domain and strode back to her own desk. Placing it delicately to one side, she traced her own keyboard cable back and saw that she would have to brave a second desk-dangling battle. Seeing how unhelpful that IT monkey had been earlier, Jane strongly suspected, nay knew, that this had been done deliberately to make her struggle. It was obvious that she was too short to unplug a keyboard when the PC was so far back on the desk, so the only explanation was that it had been spitefully positioned in order to cause her trouble. They hadn’t reckoned on her extreme determination however.
With another heroic bounce, Jane levered herself onto the desk and yanked at her keyboard’s cable roughly, hoping for a speedier de-coupling than the previous keyboard had enjoyed. With a ping the USB connector came free, but it was accompanied by a tearing sensation. As Jane pulled the wire back to herself, she saw that the cable had frayed away from the plug, as if it had somehow been subjected to a sharp force. Clearly not contented with putting the plug well out of her way, the saboteurs had also given her a faulty piece of hardware which they had deliberately weakened. There was no end to the depth of the conspiracy against her.
Casting the sticky mess of keys to one side, Jane moved her new ergonomic acquisition into place and prepared for another courageous campaign onto the desk surface. When she guided the stolen connector around the rear of the PC however, she found that it was significantly harder to plug something in blind than it was to yank harshly at a cable. Fumbling with the small plug between her fingers, Jane tapped, then jabbed, and then slammed the keyboard’s USB into roughly where she thought it ought to go, finding against all the odds that she kept missing. With her body rapidly growing tired and her usually limitless patience wearing thin, Jane slammed herself back down with the frown of a thousand failures.
“Andrew!” she bellowed in her rage. “I need help with this.”
Andrew looked up from his monitor, feeling an equal mixture of confusion, dread, and disappointment. He’d hoped that his previous entanglement would be the last, and that ignoring Jane’s blatant looting of Sarah’s desk would earn him respite from her attention. But Jane was always the antithesis of hope.
“I’m a bit busy right now, Jane.” He answered, mistaking her for a rational human being.
“Oh for goodness sake it’ll only take a minute! I just want you to reach something for me. It would be nice to actually get some work done.” She shouted, accusation lacing her tone.
“Go on, Andrew.” Gillian muttered to him. He looked back with surprise and betrayal in his eyes. “I know she’s being a bit of a cow but the redundancy probably wasn’t nice for her.” she persisted.
Andrew sighed with resignation.
“Yeah… I suppose… I just don’t want to set a precedent that-“
“Are you coming or not?” Jane shouted over impatiently.
“-that I’ll just drop everything for her.” he finished, before dropping everything for her. “Alright.” He said to the irate keyboard thief.
Andrew walked over beside Jane and held his hands out to take the keyboard from her.
“Don’t break it, alright?” she said, keeping it away from him and shooting him a stern look. “The plug goes in the back of the PC box thing there, on this side somewhere.”
“Yeah it’s OK, I know where to put it.”
“Alright! No need to bite my head off. Condescending much?” Jane snapped, throwing up a barrier against his unprovoked attack.
Andrew stood silently, unsure of what to say. Part of him wanted to apologise for patronising her unintentionally. Another part of him wanted to jam a pen into her throat.
“Would you hand me the keyboard, please?” he asked, ignoring both sides of his internal debate.
“Take it, then.” Jane said, thrusting it towards him.
Andrew lifted the keyboard from her sweaty hands and leaned over the desk. With expert precision he found the correct port and plugged the USB into place easily.
“OK, there you go.”
“There, wasn’t so hard to help, was it?” Jane said admonishingly. It proved that he had been withholding assistance from her, and the speed with which he’d plugged the keyboard in was highly suspicious. He’d said himself that he knew exactly where to plug it in, implying that he’d done this before; it was tacit admission that he’d deliberately put a sticky keyboard in place on her PC and frayed the cable to sabotage her.
Andrew stood, a little shell-shocked at Jane’s continued obstinacy, and still waited naively for the thanks that would never come.
“That’s all, you can get back to your ‘busy’ schedule now.” Jane dismissed, spelling it out for him.
Involuntarily Andrew rolled his eyes before turning on his heels and walking back through the office. Gillian looked up at him, and mouthed ‘Thank you’ as the broken man took his seat again. They both kept their gazes fixed on their respective work as Jane tossed the sticky, broken keyboard from which she had freed herself onto Sarah’s desk messily. The less they acknowledged of her behaviour the better, for the sake of plausible deniability if nothing else.
Lunchtime rolled around on its own schedule, taking a lackadaisical stroll through morning rather than storming on towards midday. When it finally arrived, Jane pushed Sarah’s freaky keyboard away from herself and stood up, making a great display of stretching her legs and back. She’d been sitting at that desk for over twenty minutes, and worked solidly for at least fifteen of them, so she wanted everyone else in the office to be damned aware of her dedication. To cap it all, that working time didn’t even count the period she’d spent furiously entering her login credentials and trying to get onto the network. Successfully logging in did mean, of course, that her computer wanted to go through some kind of first-time setup routine which she didn’t understand. Getting though that entirely automated process had necessitated another couple of tea breaks.
Regardless, the moment that the clock on her computer had ticked over to 12.30 she was on her feet and ready to go. Dedication was one thing, but she wouldn’t be throwing her own personal time away for the company. In fact, she refused to spend a second of it on their premises, instead opting to take her lunch to the car. She told herself, and anyone else she happened to see on the way out, that it was about giving herself a space which was completely separate from the office. Everyone else had suspected that it was because everyone else avoided sitting nearby to her if she stayed indoors, but allowing other people’s actions to change her behaviour didn’t sound like Jane at all.
As soon as Jane had disappeared, Andrew flopped backwards in his chair and shot a distressed look at Gillian.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to cope with this. She’s just so obnoxious. How does she still work here?” He vented finally.
“Maybe Jane is just stressed out from being forced to move and not being able to get on with things. I’d find it very difficult to believe that she could act that way all the time and still keep her employment.” Gillian responded without looking away from her work.
“She was literally just made redundant from her previous job.” Andrew pointed out.
“That was for downsizing reasons.”
“It’ll be interesting to see if they actually get any less work done.”
“Give her a chance to settle in. She might change your mind.” Gillian said with her usual insistence on giving people the benefit of the doubt. It frustrated Andrew to no end; he didn’t get any validation of his views, and he was forced to feel guilty for not being as good of a person as Gillian. “But I understand why you feel that way now. It was unfair of her to speak to you like that, but try not to let it get to you.” She offered, reinforcing Andrew’s sensations of guilt in a wave of empathetic acknowledgement.
“I’ll do my best.” Andrew conceded, accepting that he might never again get his own way.
All around the office, a post-lunch haze obscured reality. Gone was the ill-focused delirium of a hunger-addled workforce, and in its place had crept the revitalised energy of blood-sugar on one side, and sleepy full-stomached restfulness on the other.
Rolling into the misty array of quiet afternoon work a full minute late, having claimed back her tea-making daydream time, Jane settled at her desk again to prepare for even more productivity. Twenty minutes of work beyond ruffling feathers in IT and looting a keyboard wasn’t to be sniffed at, but Jane knew that she had a little more left in her.
After a full five minutes, just as Jane’s second wind was fading, Shirley strode back into the office.
Andrew buried himself in his work, desperate to avoid eye contact with Shirley. If it was inevitable that his boss would demand an update from him then he could accept it, but there was no reason to invite a conversation with her into his life if it wasn't otherwise going to happen. It would be like pre-emptively swallowing washing up liquid on the anticipation that someone was going to force a dirty teacup down his throat. Thankfully, he determined from the wooden clunking of her heels even through the carpet, she stopped short of his desk, right behind Jane's.
"How are you getting on, Jane?" She asked. An amateur would look at Shirley's body language and see a relaxed, casual, manager looking after her new recruit. But Jane's expert eye saw a viper waiting to strike and inject foul venom.
“Fine. Getting myself acquainted with the inventory software and the tracking process.” Jane told her, standing her ground against the flagrant assault.
“Good, good.” Shirley replied, sounding disinterested. Her eyes drifted down to rest on Jane’s hands, or more accurately the pilfered computing accessory on which they were resting. With a slight suspicious frown she looked over at Sarah’s desk and saw a damaged-looking normal keyboard sitting upside down on the surface.
Shirley stared, feeling anger boil up through her body like an unattended pot of rice, starchy water racing to spill onto the stove before the inattentive chef notices. Did the insane old bag really think that this would go unnoticed? Getting that frankly extortionate keyboard for Sarah had been like pulling someone’s pelvis out through their nose, only with more resistance at every level. Sarah had been whining about potential RSI or some such nonsense for months, taking every opportunity to bring it up or rub at her wrists, until Shirley had finally relented and raised the issue with Terry, her direct superior. He’d been his usual knob-head self about it, but gave in on the grounds of avoiding legal action, or illegal action. Any action at all, really, was something Terry worked hard to avoid. So the request had finally been raised but a specific model had to be chosen before the purchase request could be taken to procurement, and only from one of the company’s preferred vendors. No-one really understood how to achieve preferential status for a vendor, and as far as Shirley could tell it was just a matter of having all prices marked up by around thirty percent, but the list of vendors existed nonetheless and so she had to pick one. Once she had forced her body through that hoop, IT had to approve the choice and check for compatibility, which would for some reason take a full week after the point of receiving the keyboard on site.
Sarah had joked that the keyboard would finally arrive just after she left for maternity. As the weeks kept passing, however, it wasn’t a joke anymore. Now it was preparing to be a ‘welcome back’ gift, or at least it had been before Jane had swiped it for herself.
“What are you doing with that keyboard?” Shirley snapped suddenly.
“I’m using it to type.” Jane answered unintentionally smarmily.
“You know exactly what I’m asking and I don’t appreciate that kind of unprofessional attitude.” Shirley barked.
“I told you earlier that the one here was sticky. I’m not typing with a sticky keyboard.”
“No, you’re typing with a stolen one instead. You saw that Sarah had a nicer one and just decided to take it and put it on your PC.”
“I didn’t! Andrew did it for me.” Jane defended, throwing Andrew bodily under the bus she herself had flagged down.
The silence in the office could have absorbed every New Year’s Eve cheer around the globe quite comfortably, and still had sufficient quietness left over to be eerily quiet afterwards. Andrew slowly raised his wide-eyed face up to look at Shirley, a shivering child staring into the black abyss of hopelessness knowing that they had just broken their mother’s prized crystal fruit bowl.
“You did what?!” Fire and ash erupted from the mouth of Mount Shirley.
“I didn’t take it from Sarah’s desk, I was against the whole thing!” Andrew pleaded courageously.
“Are you lying to me Jane?” Shirley growled.
“No!”
“She’d already taken it, I just helped to get the plug in because I could reach.” Andrew explained.
“That couldn’t be further from the point!” the apparition of fury bellowed. “We don’t steal things from one another’s desks, especially during maternity leave!”
“I didn’t steal it, I ju-”
“I don’t want to hear it, Andrew. I suggest that you return to your desk and get on with something more productive. And you,” she said, turning to Jane “will use what you are given and raise it to me formally if there is an issue. You will not just take what you please from around the office. Is that clear? I didn’t have to offer you this role, and so help me if you make my life harder I will take it away like export wanted me to. Do you hear me?”
Another silence hung in the air. Where the first had been born of fear, this one was voiceless horror that someone had remarked on the elephant which had, until now, gone unmentioned despite its hulking presence in the room. The only thing more awkward than having to deal with Jane was discussing exactly why they had to deal with her. Gillian had skirted around the issue when asking Andrew for tolerance. Andrew had let it justify computer accessory redistribution. And Jane had hidden behind it, although she still would have behaved just as badly without it. But Shirley just dropped it into the room, allowing it to smash through the ceiling tiles, shatter the lightbulbs, and crush Jane’s desk under the weight of humiliation.
“Yes. I understand. Thank you.” Jane said quietly. Andrew would have sworn that he’d celebrate the day he saw Jane give up fighting lost causes, or just accept a logical statement without twisting it into a direct attack on herself. But hearing her so defeated gave him no pleasure. She’d finally accepted that her employer held all the cards, and that she wasn’t the lynch pin holding them all together. Someone had just burst that bubble dramatically, and pointed out that, if anything, she was an inconvenience of which they would like all-too-much to dispose.
“Good. Don’t let me see this again.” Shirley warned, before turning on her heel and striding away.
No-one had a thing to say, and the office filled itself with quiet tapping.
With nary an accusation of vile conspiracy, the afternoon passed. Perhaps as penance for her typographic kleptomania, Shirley had ordered Jane to take all of the old paper archives and scan them onto the network. It was little better than busy-work, the lowest priority of everything, but it needed doing and Jane was being told in no uncertain terms that her time was the least important of everyone’s. After hours of scanning, a little spark lit up in the back of Jane’s mind, and postulated that Shirley must be jealous. She was scared that Jane’s natural leadership would outshine her own. That was almost certainly it; Shirley had wanted to set up a power play to keep Jane down, and planted the two keyboards as a trap.
Jane heaved several folders’ worth of paper into her arms from the scanner and staggered towards the shredder which was, for reasons unknown to anyone, on the opposite side of the room. Legs wobbling slightly and bowing outwards, Jane took uneven and poorly balanced steps through the room, individual loose leaves of paper fluttering to the ground behind her as she went. Keeping an eye all around for those vultures who sought to profit from her misfortune, Jane noticed a clock hanging on the wall above Sarah’s desk and saw with welcome surprise that it was 5.00pm; she’d made it. She had survived another day of thanklessly keeping the company afloat, despite those forces which sought to stop her.
Jane dropped the papers heavily onto Andrew’s desk, spilling them across his keyboard in an untidy pile as he typed, and mixing in with the important reports he was summarising at the time. To the soundtrack of his aggrieved moans Jane grabbed her fur-lined jacket from the coatrack, moving with twice the speed and energy she’d been able to muster earlier in the day.
In spite of the machinations of everyone else against her, IT’s attempting to keep her out of the network, Andrew helping to sabotage her keyboard, and the blatant envy flowing from her new manager, Jane had managed to weather the storm and escape. Once again she had defended her freedom and was on the way home. She could relax, and she could recover from the toil of the day.
When she got home, Gerald would listen with rapt interest to the tales of victory Jane brought with her, and agree with the astute assessments of her colleagues’ more spiteful natures. They would share a meal together to celebrate her resilience. And then, after an evening of riveting televised drama, morning would come and she would be back; refreshed and ready. She would face the perils of another day as a victim of all the company wished to throw her way. But despite the efforts made to bring her down she would withstand everything yet again, she would put on her brave, silent martyr’s face, and she would keep fighting on.