Confessions of an Office Boy 5 of 5

For a few years in my "mid to late twenties" I worked at a Legal Services company. Frequently, I emailed little quips and blurbs about my job to my mother. She kept them all. Many years after when I decided to start writing I put a bunch of them together in the hopes of making a story. I cleaned them up, adding bits here and there, but I could never quite make them into anything I felt "publishable." The writing style and tone were fine at the time, but changing them to any sort of "literary standard" drastically lost the sincerity in which they were written. So, I gave up on them... until now!!! I hate that I just did that, said "until now" prefaced by an ellipsis. Anyway, I'm going to "release" what I had put together on Facebook and on my shitty blog that I pay no attention to. This is "Episode 5 of 5" of Confessions of an Office Boy.

Email #21:

I will never ride the elevator at 645 Fort St. again. The building is old, splashed with character, charming, with tall ceilings, a rustic smell, and wicked architectural nuances. And the elevators, I am certain, are manually pulled between floors by minimum wage workers named Paulo and Cedric.

I take the elevator because I have to go to Noble Young Virgin on the fifth floor, but today’s experience changed that. At the North end of the building I waited for one of the two lifts to arrive. This is usually where you realize that walking would be faster but you’ve already committed too much time to waiting and, if you were to leave, the elevator would surely be there in an instant.

So, I waited, and it came, eventually. I reached the bottom and the doors opened. I walked out into a canopy of construction. A man, to my left, had opened the wall and was working with a wrench. A co-worker passed him a crumpled diagram. There were sparks, exposed wires, an old thermos, lots of white dust. I turned as I approached the main entrance to view the “site” and there was a sign on the wall above the workers that said, “Elevator Modernization Process.” I thought “Don't they shut down the elevators when they work on them?” “Were Benny & Son having coffee while I was descending down five flights?” What would have happened if they jerked suddenly, spilling coffee on exposed wires, and I ended up in the basement looking like a human pancake?

From now on I will walk between floors at 645 Fort St. and I'll only ride the elevators in shinny new buildings, their zippy silver space pods transporting me tot the legal heavens.

Email #22:

One of the most amusing parts of the job is when people come in our front door looking for Mulligan Tam Pearson, the law firm that deals with people caught driving drunk. They are located on the third floor. The main entrance to the building is actually around the side so they come to us and ask directions. It’s always the same type of person, whether nineteen or fifty-five, male or female, well off or with a leather jacket and sweatpants. A drunk driver is a drunk driver. No hiding. It's the ultimate social nudity. They’re mostly people in a hurry, drooling- yes, I have seen it-, slightly disheveled, and, more often than not, clutching a page of the phone book. We calmly instruct them to go around the side of the building to the main entrance and take the elevator to the third floor.

The irony is that Mulligan Tam Pearson throws a large summer solstice party. They rent the top floor of the building, invite all the lawyers and agents in town, and provide free booze and food. They also hire DJ’s and a rock band. It’s legendary. Everyone looks forward to it and Mulligan Tam Pearson probably make a killing defending the resulting DUI's.

Email #23:

It's late in the morning and I have walked to the courthouse. The fog refuses to lift. A couple, gruff and wet, argue on the damp courthouse steps. She has thick blonde curly hair, accentuated by buckteeth. Her jacket is three sizes too large and she wears black jeans. She’s smoking quickly, methodically. He’s dressed for construction and a faded Boston Red Sox hat presses low against his nose. He’s squatting on the arches of his feet, head in hands, rocking. She says, “I'm nearly twenty-two, Jason, Christ, you're almost fourteen years older than me. Get your act together.” I open the court door thinking about how heavy the box I’m carrying is.

Email #24:

Josef is the oldest person at Dyke and Howard. He’s actually pretty much useless. He slithers into work around eleven, picks up some work, and drives around all day dropping it off. It's a good job to coast out a career on: low stress, quiet, time to oneself, all the CBC you could ever want. But for whatever reason he keeps screwing it up, like this morning when he accidentally served child-custody papers to the wrong person. Betty McLeod, at home with her child, answered the door to a package ordering her to give up her two-year-old son. I can only imagine the confusion that ensued until Mrs. McLeod realized that documents were for her neighbour.

A few weeks back, while delivering some documents, Josef decided that an accompanying letter, addressed to the CEO of a company, wasn't important. The undelivered, vital letter meant that a three million dollar deal for a duck farm collapsed.

I hope Josef has a wonderful pension package.

Email #25:

Recently, people have made comments about my voice. At the Land Title Office last week, while at the intercom where I say “Dyke and Howard here,” slightly bent over like I'm drinking out of a water fountain, someone came out from the storage vault and said, “The women in the back think you have a really sexy voice.” First thing this morning, while answering phones, some lady said, “With a voice like yours, you should be a television news anchor.”

And then, a few moments ago, a friend of Linda called. After I put the call through to Linda, and after she had a fifteen-minute conversation about lawnmowers on sale at Wall-Mart, she slid over in her chair and said, “Barbara wants to know if your body is as hot as your voice.”

Right now I’m looking in the yellow pages for voice-over agents.

Email #26:

Now I have done it. I have gone and become a certified secretary. I didn't take a course or go to school, or become someone's apprentice. I did this on my own. There is no turning back and there were witnesses.

I answered the phone probably the best I’ve ever answered a phone at Dyke and Howard. It wasn't for me. So, I pressed the hold button, my Telephone Technique in full flight, and looked around for Bella. She was not in her office, by the copier, or at the supplies cupboard. I tried to think like her: “If I were Bella, where would I be right now?” And then there she was striding across the floor. I put the phone to my shoulder, right hand over the speaker- even though it was on hold- and said, “Bella.” And then I synched it, I solidified my position as a professional, a “career man.” I mouthed, in slow motion, and with all the business sincerity I could muster, “phone call.” I transferred the call and hung up.

It was like the moment a boy realizes he is a man, or some other type of epiphany regarded as a pivotal landmark in one’s life.

Email #27:

I won a hundred and sixty dollars in the Survivor office pool. The guy I was randomly selected was the winner; named Kwon, I think. I’ve never watched the show before. Everyone thinks it’s a terrible injustice that I’m the “Survivor Office Champion.” They all watch the show regularly, talking endlessly about it the morning after it airs. I guess it’s kind of like the guy who wins the lottery the first time he plays while you’ve been playing the same numbers for thirty years. Oh well, sometimes goes like that.

Email #28:

I quit today. A phone call was forwarded to my desk. It was the lady who interviewed me at the Ministry of Forests- I’ve been firing out resumes for months. She offered me the position of Records Clerk. I accepted before she finished speaking. My tasks will include putting stickers on file folders and stacking boxes in underground bunkers. I think it’s great that I’ll be working for the forests of the province and manipulating paper products all day long.

After the call I went to Bella’s office to deliver the news. I could barely hold back my tears of joy. I used some of my Survivor winnings from the other day to buy a couple of tacos for lunch. Success never tasted so good.

Email #29:

Today was my last day. I gave Dyke and Howard four days notice. Sandy, my new supervisor, had been hassling me since Monday, saying that I owed her for the job reference she gave me. I kept telling her I owed her nothing. This is the same woman that tried to cut my hair when I wasn’t looking because she thought I would look more professional with shorter bangs. Besides non-consensual hair-trimming being a dangerous activity, Sandy is a tragic supporter of eighties fashion and I believe it was her intention to give me a mullet. I hate Sandy. A lot. And I’m still surprised as to why she gave me a reference, and, for that matter, why I asked her for one.

On my afternoon trip to the Seaplane terminal I told the girls there that it was my last day. They seemed genuinely upset that I was leaving. The girl in charge, Cecily, decided it would be nice to give me a return flight to Vancouver as a parting gift. I worked two and half years at Dyke and Howard and my parting gift from them was a pen and a card signed by my co-workers. The card contained such heartfelt and meaningful lines as, “Best of luck, Bill!” and “It sure was great working with ya!” The people I see at the Seaplane Terminal for an average of ten minutes a day gave me the gift of flight and I don’t even work there. I’m not bitter.

I couldn’t wait for the end of the day so I decided to leave. What were they going to do, fire me? That’s what I said to Trish on the way out. There was no long goodbye. I just got up and left. It was quite warm out. I walked back down to the Seaplane terminal, hopped on the four forty-five, and flew off to the next life.

Thank you for reading. Confessions of an Office Boy is now closed.

William Farrant