The Ignored (3 page)

I nodded as Banks spoke, agreeing with him, pretending like I knew what
the hell he was talking about even though I had only a vague idea of what was
being discussed. Software documentation? User-friendliness? These were not terms
with which I was comfortable or familiar. These were phrases I’d heard but had
always made an extra effort to avoid. This was someone else’s language, not
mine.

“Do you have any questions so far?” Banks asked.

I shook my head.

“Good,” he said.

But it was anything but good. He continued to talk, and I continued to
listen, but… how can I describe it? The atmosphere was uncomfortable? There
was no rapport between us? We were different types of people? All of these
descriptions are correct, but they do not really reflect what I felt in that
office. For as we sat there, as we looked at one another, we both realized that
we did not like each other—and never would. There is a sort of instantaneous
antipathy between people who don’t get along, an unspoken recognition
acknowledged by both parties, and that was what was happening here. The
conversation remained polite, official, and the surface formalities were
observed, but there was something else going on as well, and the relationship
that was being forged between us was not one of friendship.

If we’d both been ten and on the playground at school, Ted Banks would
have been one of the bullies who wanted to beat me up.

“Ron Stewart will be your immediate supervisor,” Banks was saying. “Ron
is Coordinator of Interoffice Procedures and Phase II Documentation, and you’ll
be reporting directly to him.”

As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” Banks called.

The door opened, and Ron Stewart stepped into the office.

I disliked him on sight.

I don’t know why. There was no rational reason. I didn’t know the man at
all and really had nothing to base my judgment on, but my first impression was
strong, very strong, and definitely not favorable.

Stewart walked confidently into the room. He was tall and good-looking,
dressed impeccably in a gray business suit, white shirt, and red tie. He strode
into the office smiling, offering me his hand, and there was something about his
bearing, about the arrogant way he walked, stood, and carried himself, that
immediately rubbed me the wrong way. But I put on a smile, stood, shook his
hand, and returned his greeting.

“Glad to have you aboard,” he said. His voice was brisk, curt,
businesslike. His grip was strong and firm. Too firm.

Glad to have you aboard.
I’d known before he opened his mouth
that he’d say something like that, that he’d use some sports metaphor, that he’d
welcome me “aboard,” tell me he was glad to have me on the “team.”

I nodded politely.

“I’m looking forward to working with you, Jones. From what I’ve heard, I
think you’ll be a valuable asset to AII.”

From what he’d heard? I watched Stewart as he sat down. What could he
have heard?

“I’ve been talking to Jones about our overall operation,” Banks said.
“Why don’t you tell him a little bit about Interoffice Procedures and Phase II
Documentation.”

Stewart began talking, repeating an obviously memorized spiel. I
listened to him, nodded in the appropriate places, but I found it hard to
concentrate on what he was saying. His tone of voice was unrelievedly
condescending, as though he was explaining a simple concept to a slow child, and
although I allowed no reaction to show on my face, his tone grated on me.

Finally, Stewart stood. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you on a tour of
the department.”

“Okay,” I said.

We took the elevators downstairs, to the fourth floor, walking through
the rabbit warren of modular workstations where the Phase II programmers were
housed. He introduced me to each: Emery Phillips, Dave DeMotta, Stacy Kerrin,
Dan Chan, Kim Thomas, Gary Yamaguchi, Albert Connor, and Pam Greene. They seemed
nice enough, most of them, but they were all so involved in their work it was
hard to tell. Only Stacy, a short, ultra efficient-looking blond woman, bothered
to look up from her terminal when I was introduced. She met my eyes, gave me a
brisk nod, shook my hand, then turned away. The rest of them merely nodded
distractedly or raised a curt hand in greeting.

“Programmers necessarily have to develop and maintain a high level of
concentration,” Stewart said. “Don’t take it personally if they’re not always as
talkative as they should be.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“You’ll be working closely with the programmers once you become involved
in systems documentation. You’ll find out they’re not as antisocial as they
first appear.”

We walked out of the programming area and past a series of glass-walled
rooms where testing and other peripheral activities were performed. He
introduced me to Hope Williams, the department secretary, and Lois and Virginia,
the two women from the steno pool we shared with the third floor.

Then it was time to check out my office.

My office.

The word “office” had conjured in my mind the image of a spacious room.
Plush carpeting, wood paneling, an oak desk. A window with a view. Bookshelves.
Something akin to what Banks had. Instead, I was led into a small, narrow
cubicle slightly bigger than my parents’ walk-in closet. There were two desks
here, ugly metal behemoths that took up almost all available space and were
situated side by side, with only walking room between them. Both desks faced a
blank wall, a white add-on separated into even segments by thin metal connecting
strips running lengthwise from floor to ceiling. Behind them was a row of gray
metal filing cabinets.

Seated at the desk nearest the door was an old man with a crown of white
hair and the small, hard eyes and belligerent stare of the terminally petty. He
glared at me as I stepped into the office.

This was his domain and I was trespassing, and he wanted me to know it.

All the hopes I’d had of coming into an interesting job in a pleasant
working environment died finally and forever as I forced myself to nod and smile
at the man Stewart introduced to me simply as “Derek.”

“Hello,” Derek said dryly. His features had a cast of blunt ignorance:
pug nose, small mouth with jutting lower lip, tiny intolerant eyes. It was a
face that showed no patience to members of ethnic groups, other generations, or
the opposite sex. He reached across his desk, took my proffered hand, and shook,
but it was clear from the expression on his face that I was too young for
serious consideration. His palm was cold and clammy, and he immediately sat back
down and pretended to ignore me, scribbling something on a piece of paper in
front of him.

“Well give you an hour or so to get settled. Derek here’ll show you the
ropes, won’t you?”

The old man looked up, nodded noncommittally.

“You can go through your desk, keep what you’ll need, toss out what you
don’t want. After break, maybe, I’ll drop by and we can start going over your
first assignment.”

As with Banks, there were several levels at work here. The surface words
were standard, noncommittal, but there was an undercurrent in Stewart’s delivery
that let me know that, however hard I might try, I would never be part of the
“team.”

“I’ll catch you later,” Stewart said. Once again, he shook my hand,
pressing hard, and then he was gone.

I moved past Derek’s desk in the crowded, suddenly silent office and
over to my own. I sat down awkwardly in the ancient swivel chair provided me.

This was not working out the way I’d expected. Somewhere in the back of
my mind, I guess I’d thought it would be like
How to Succeed in Business
Without Really Trying.
I’d seen the movie on TV when I was little, and
while I had never even considered a career in business, that film had glamorized
the corporate world for me, instilling within me a vision that not even years of
subsequently grittier and more realistic movies had been able to erase entirely.

But the cleanly stylized offices and boardrooms through which Robert
Morse sang were a far cry from the cramped and claustrophobic quarters in which
I now found myself.

I opened the drawers of my desk, but I didn’t know what to clean out. I
didn’t know enough about my job to know what I would and wouldn’t need.

I glanced over at Derek. He smiled at me, but the smile was not quick
enough to cover the hard expression that had been in its place a second before.

“New jobs,” he said, shaking his head as though sympathetically
identifying with a common experience.

“Yeah,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

I looked at the top of my desk. Both the metal in box and out box were
full, and a selection of books were stacked next to them:
Roget’s
Thesaurus
,
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
,
Creating Creative Technical
Manuals
,
Dictionary of Computer Terminology.

Creating technical manuals? Computer terminology? I felt like a fraud
already, even though I hadn’t officially started my work. What did I know about
this stuff?

I was still not sure of my duties exactly. Lisa had given me a
single-page job description, but it was filled with the same vague wording as
the one handed to me at the interview. I had a general idea of what was required
of me, but the specific tasks I was supposed to perform, the precise
requirements of my position had never been spelled out to me, and I felt lost. I
thought of asking Derek about it—he was, after all, supposed to be showing me
“the ropes”—but when I glanced again in his direction, he was looking too
intently and too obviously at a typed sheet of paper, and I knew that he did not
want to talk to me.

Following his lead, I removed the stack of papers from my in box and,
one by one, began sorting through them. I had no idea what I was looking at, but
it didn’t seem to matter. Derek said nothing to me, and I continued to look at
each page, pretending I knew what I was doing.

It was an hour later when the phone on my desk buzzed twice, although it
felt to me as though five hours had passed.

“Mr. Stewart,” Derek said, speaking his first words since the enigmatic
“New jobs.” He nodded toward the phone. “Press star seven.”

I picked up the receiver, pressed the asterisk button and the number
seven on the console. “Hello?” I said.

“No.” Stewart’s voice was strong and disapproving. “When you answer the
phone, you say, ‘Interoffice Procedures and Phase II Documentation. Bob Jones
speaking.’”

“Sorry,” I said. “No one told me.”

“Now you’ve been told. I don’t want to catch you answering the phone
incorrectly again.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“I may have forgotten to mention it,” Stewart said, “but you are
entitled to two fifteen-minute breaks and an hour lunch each day. Your breaks
will be taken at ten in the morning and three in the afternoon. Your lunch will
be from noon until one. Your break may be spent at your desk or in the
fourth-floor break room. You may leave the building and spend your lunch
wherever you want as long as you return to your desk by one.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

The phone clicked in my ear, and I looked down for a moment, panicked.
I’d been fiddling with the phone cord, and I thought I might have accidentally
cut him off, but my hand was nowhere near the cradle, and I realized that he had
simply hung up on me.

I replaced the handset and glanced over at Derek. “Where’s the break
room?” I asked.

He did not look up. “End of the hall, turn right.”

“Thanks,” I said, walking past his desk and out the door.

The break room was small, the size of the living room in our apartment.
There was a refrigerator and a soft-drink machine against one wall, a
dilapidated couch against another, and two mismatched dining room tables in the
center. The room smelled of old ladies, of closeted linen and cloying perfume.
Underneath, more lightly, I detected a stale scent that was either refrigerated
lunches or lingering body odor.

There were three old women seated around the closest table, dressed in
too-bright floral blouses, and pantsuits that had been stylish several decades
back. One woman, hair dyed years younger than was flattering, sat nibbling on a
bear claw, staring into space. The other two drank cups of coffee, idly flipping
through well-thumbed copies of
Redbook.
None of the women spoke. They
barely looked up at the sound of my footsteps as I entered the room.

What the hell had I gotten myself into here? I suddenly found myself
wishing that I’d kept my part-time job at Sears as a backup. I could’ve quit
this job then. We’d been poor with both of us working part-time, but we’d gotten
by, and if I’d known it was going to be like this, I would’ve turned down this
position and waited for another.

But I was screwed now, trapped here until I could find something else.

I vowed to start applying elsewhere as soon as possible.

Cokes were fifty cents. I had three quarters in my pocket, and I dropped
two of them into the machine, pressed the button. A can of Shasta Cola rolled
out. Shasta? The machine sported a Coca-Cola logo.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Stewart was sitting in my seat when I returned to the office. He
swiveled to face me as I entered the room. “Where have you been?” he asked.

I looked at the clock above the filing cabinets. I’d been gone less than
ten minutes. “Break,” I said.

He shook his head. “You’re not one of those, are you?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You’re entitled to a break by law,” he said. “But don’t abuse the
privilege.”

I wanted to respond, wanted to remind him that he had called me and told
me to take a fifteen-minute break and that I had been gone only seven or eight
minutes, but I didn’t dare. I nodded. “Okay.”