A Story for Lunchtime (From Sept 2004)

It's lunchtime, and I ran out for a roll with ham and cheese and ran back in again when it started to rain. Now all I can do is stare at the bizarre Internet, or past the orderly heads at the grey outside that becomes obscured by the rain on the windows. I feel like I'm on a train journey. The 1pm to Wishing I Was Elsewhere.

Working in a Business Park is not what anyone promised. The "handy local shops" are impossible with the queues of employees from 30 large multinationals all waiting to get a roll, sandwich or drink at one o'clock. We bustle through busily, letting the Chinese workers understand that we're all way too important to really spend much time in the confined space of the franchised, big name minimarket where they work. They, in retaliation, quietly take the piss out of our self-satisfied busyness. They've seen us walking around at breaktimes, and they've seen our despondent faces, staring at the grey sky, which meets grey buildings in a depressed unison. They know we don't feel that important at all. If we were gone for a day, few would notice. If they were gone for an hour, hundreds could go hungry with the lunch shortage and the long queue. It takes a degree in English and Philosophy to get this depressed, I'm sure.

The park looks like it was built by ants who just dropped some concrete, hollowed out to make space for desks and computers and telephones and can machines and such. We bustle around being important, despite the fact that we could all be expected to sacrafice ourselves to some form of a colony queen soon enough.

There is nowhere to go on a rainy day, except back into your own building. I wish we could do swaps. The guys from the large American Multinational over there could come and see the building of the large American Multinational that we work for, while we go and check out the building of the large American Multinational at the other side of the park.

I wonder what PCs look like in those buildings, or the Internet, or even middle managers? There's a whole world out there, in this little park. And I've tried to explore it by applying for jobs in all those companies - those large Multinational American companies, so different form the large Multinational American company I work for. They value their employees. They'd miss you if you were gone. Maybe they miss you already - given that you're not there. They could use your abilities, your experience, your qualifications. But after they read another CV from another arts graduate with another X number of years in the workplace of another large Multinational American company, they think you're not quite the right person for them. Or, they tell you their company is not quite the right company for you.

My roll is gone now, so a quick swig of orange juice that I got free from a machine as a perk of my job, and I pop in the Nicotine pill that I now take in lieu of being a smoker. 10 minutes to the end of lunch, so this little break in the day quickly becomes gone, like yesterday. Yesterday I decided I would give it up. Thie cubicle-existence - defined by fun blue curvy dividers that allow everyone to see me looking at whatever I look at on the Internet. Maybe I could go back to college and become a doctor or a lawyer. I could easliy get a good job working for a large Multinational American company as a medical checkup guy or a legal advisor.

Anyway, with five minutes to go, this train of thought must stop - toot toot. And the only passenger (my consciousness) must alight, and get onto the 2pm to Ennui. Hope you enjoyed the journey. Most of all I hope you read about it during work. In a big grey building, inhabited by the employees of a large multinational American copmany. If you did, you might see if there are any jobs going for me?