Mr. Smith (The Hero)

It’s real bad today, the buzzing drone of the hundreds of voices all speaking at the same time. It splits my head like wet pine. I glance around at the people with their headsets on, bathed in the pale light of their computers. I want to scream at them "your already dead!" but I don’t. There are a lot of things I find myself not doing lately. I guess it comes with age. I am twenty-eight now, and I am not the arrogant, no consequences person I was when I was twenty. I would have quit this sickening job long ago if I were still the person I was even eight years ago. As it is, I come in to this place every day and climb in to my little cubicle and allow them to hack away at my soul for eight long hours.
It’s unnatural, to say the least. There are hundreds of people herded in to this building everyday and lined up in their little cubicles like human cattle to be milked of their services. We are given an employee number and we are accessed and identified by those digits. I find myself struggling daily with the inhumanity of it. I rage, silently seething in my factory made seat. I have been here for almost three years. I shudder every time I think of that fact. It seems hardly possible that I would have allowed myself the indignity of such a term in this place.
I take another call from another stupid person. I feel like I have lost all respect for the human race. I am beyond feelings now, I am so numbed from the daily barrage of complaints and ignorance. I feel like a prisoner. I start to sweat, even though the air conditioning is blasting out cold artificial air that chills to the bone in a way real air never does. I rub my forehead and it comes away moist. I am reminded of terrible evenings of paranoia and fear fueled by a head full of LSD. It is the same sort of thing now, feeling like I am cornered and trapped, ready to explode in an instant and start spouting nonsensical monologues about nazi wannabe’s and making Orwellian comparisons.
I see my supervisor at the end of the hall. He is walking with his head down and studying whatever knowledge the clipboard clutched firmly in his sweaty hands has to offer. He isn’t even watching where he is walking, just trudging onward through the aisles he has been walking for years. I am beginning to think there is some kind of radar mechanism buried deep in the ridiculous Freddie Mercury moustache situated in the middle of his portly red face. He is a squat little man with no redeeming qualities in his physical appearance. He is the sort of person who has spent his entire life being persecuted and humiliated by people like me, and now, gloriously drunk on the little sliver of authority he has been handed by management, he has become an avenging angel for all of the little ugly geeks everywhere.
I continue to watch him as he makes his way ever closer to me and I am beginning to fear the worst. He must be coming to see me, and that can only be bad, as it has never been good. He waddles right up to my desk and still he has yet to look up from the clipboard. He stands engrossed in the information on that clipboard, he is breathing through his nostrils and creating a barely audible whistling noise that infuriates me beyond words.
"You looking for me?" I ask abruptly, looking for a reprieve from that god-awful noise coming from the wind tunnels above that ridiculous moustache.
"Mr. Smith…." He started, still not looking up from his board. "I see you had an unscheduled log off of your phone yesterday for four and a half minutes."
" Yea…?" I prompted him for more information.
Finally looking up from that clipboard he met my gaze. "Did you fill out the PR88 schedule adherence form and drop it off in my folder?"
"Are you serious?" I asked angrily. "I went to the washroom. I am a grown man, who doesn’t need to rationalize or ask permission for going to the washroom."
" We have policies and procedures here Mr. Smith, and we expect everyone to follow those policies and procedures…even if they don’t agree with them. I do expect the PR88 schedule adherence form filled out and dropped in to my folder by the end of the day."
Something inside me just let go. I stood up quickly and his eyes rolled upward in their sockets to follow mine. I stood at least a half foot taller than him and as I looked down in to his face. I inhaled loudly through my nose gathering as much debris from my sinuses as possible. The supervisor knew what was coming and he didn’t do a thing to stop it. He just stood rooted to the floor looking up in to my face awaiting the inevitable. I let loose with a gob of nastiness that struck him in the nose and ridiculous Freddie Mercury moustache. I then turned my back on him and leapt up on to my desk. I threw the headset to the ground, and yelled at the top of my lungs.
"Look at you all! You’re a bunch of fucking sheep. You don’t belong here! Get up from your desks and walk out. These people you work for don’t respect you, they think that your garbage. Get up and walk out, let’s see how well they can do without you."
Everyone around immediately stood up to stare slack jawed, with various degrees of surprise showing on their stupid sheep faces.
"I am shaking the stink of this place off of me for the last time. I beseech you all… Take back your souls and walk out of this door with me. Don’t let these foolish little bastards run you through their hoops any longer. You don’t need the money this badly."
The security officers had reached me by this point and were trying to get me down off of the desk. One of them wrapped their arms around my knees and was hauling me down. I was braying like a sheep at the top of my lungs. " BAAAA BAAAA BAAAA!" I didn’t fight the security guards, much to their relief. I went peacefully enough, stopping only long enough to smile in the hateful pudgy face of my supervisor who still had my inner fluids dripping off of his face. I continued with the sheep noises all of the way to the front door.
As I sat at my desk filling out my PR88 schedule adherence form for the four and a half minutes I signed out of my phone to use the bathroom, I smiled to myself, thinking they may be able to take my dignity but they can’t have my imagination.
01/14/03