It is feeding.
It’s 11 am and it is feeding. Every day at this time (for it is a creature of routine) we hear the familiar scrapping and gnawing on the other side of the partition.
Oh we’ve watched those pink tiny fingers worrying crisps and broken biscuits many times. Foraging away at whatever’s lying about on that sad little table. Eyes and ears twitching. Seething over her last skirmish, planning the next.
Her hair is long, jet, and frames pitch pools of black. Her face is like a haunted picture in an abandoned house. Her clothes are immaculate and dull.
And all of it, hated. All of her implacable façade, is wretched and hated.
By us, her team. As we speculate in impotent whispers and sneaky emails that her house is filthy.
That she’s alone forever.
That she has no life.
This passionate cruelty for our Manager, (Certified and Indispensable), is our only sustenance. And it’s a thin gruel.
But she is tenacious, highly valued…utterly indispensable….
Apparently.
She’s indefensible. Utterly.
And then, the harsh scrape. The chair back smartly. Same every time. She is moving and we flinch as one, move as one, our eyes flashing darting downwards down into the mush we produce. All this drivel that she presents to the world as vital industry, the fruits of her continual striving.
No one looks at her. We’re back to dreaming with no end in sight. It’s 11:08 and just another day in the office.
Oh we are well enough paid, but we are starving.
Michael Carey is originally from Northern Ireland but is now clinging to the edge of London with a firm grip. He can be found on Twitter where he is sometimes funny, often angry and occasionally thoughtful @menaman1. He also tends a website from time to time: https://apparentlyaspark.wordpress.com/
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Cover Photo: AK Rockefeller (https://www.flickr.com/photos/akrockefeller/)