Man Who Ceased to Be. 2: At Work

At work

The answer to this existential question came to him just a few days later. It was the day of his monthly meeting with his manager, a face-to-face review of his work and sales performances. This was a routine event for any incorporated wage-slave like he was.

He had only been half an hour between the two mobile partitions of his desk (the kind that gives a seemingly individuality and intimacy to him and the other few scores employees on the open space) when a phone ring cut him off as he was touching unconsciously the barren arch of his former hairy eyebrow. It was his boss.

He walked in his boss’s office (as in every other corporate building, his manager was the only one to enjoy this luxury on the floor; the sales reps had only six square feet room allocated for them) and was curtly offered a seat.  As the curtains were drawn, his boss seemed to be withdrawn in the shadows; he could not make out his face as they spoke. They both skimmed through his productivity stats: total of appointments with customers, gross revenue on current deals, total current customers in his agenda, total on-going deals and so forth, figures and more figures, read up, read down, cross-read, analyzed. He heard himself being told his results were not corporatively satisfactory.  He groveled in excuses: the big deal he was working on right now summoned all his energy; unfortunately, his customer had cancelled twice their appointments, one after the other; this explained why he had been unable to make any revenue this month. He agreed that actually, he had not brought any revenue in for the last three months now. But this was a long-term project, and if it worked out, the end results- and subsequent substantial income for the company- could not be expected before six months at least. All his attention was focused on this project; this too explained why he had not been able to add some new customers to his portfolio.

His boss waved his excuses off.

    ‘How long have you been working here now, Miller?’ He snapped ‘Three years? Doing the same job? How does it feel to be three years at the same position, in an ambition-driven, power-hungry corporative jungle, Miller?’

    Miller thought that it actually felt good as long as his commissions were flowing in every quarter, to keep his social standing and his home and personal economy afloat, and his wife happily swimming at his side in this sea of suburban and corporate goodness. Which wasn’t happening for the last two quarters, though. He suspected this kind of answer would not be satisfactory to his boss either, would it?

‘That’s what your issue is, Miller,’ the voice of his boss came back to derail the train of his thoughts ‘you need to be ambitious Miller, you need to forget your self, you need to blend more in your environment, you need to strive to reach the top Miller; being happy with what you have is totally un-corporate, you hear? You need your customer to mirror in our corporation through you Miller, do you un-der-stand?’ His boss had stammered down his fist on the desk at every syllable.

Yes he did un-der-stand. He needed to drag the customer in not because of  his personality but rather by displaying the values of his corporation. He needed to be the display window of his corporation. Where his customer could pick and rely to find any solutions to their own needs. A rep lacking ambition obviously did not urge the customer to choose them to help them strive for better.

‘I’m going to tell you something. You can do so much better. Even on your personal outlooks. Don’t get me wrong, you dress sharp, you look squeaky clean, all neat. But look here,’ his boss pointed at his head ‘your ears,’ Miller touched unconsciously his right ear, ‘yes your ears. They’re cauliflower ears. Now look, I know one doesn’t choose his afflictions, I’m myself a bit overweight, but still. Doesn’t it strike you that when your customer looks at your cauliflower ears; he’s liable to find the same crookedness in our corporation? You are the image of our company, do you think our company is flawed Miller? No, of course you don’t. Do something about it, fix up those ears; I’m sure your customer won’t jump on your appointments next time he sees your ears are normal, get it?’

He realized his boss was right. That was it; that explained the odd looks his customer team –the CEO, the CFO, the IT Director, the HR Manager- and a long list of other Officers, Directors, and Managers was unanimously casting at him; the suppressed smiles he had managed to catch.

It took him less than a month to fix his ears. He started rubbing them, one at a time, from the outer edge down to the lobe, in a spiral. He would do that every morning before going to work, and every evening when he was back home. If the sensorial pleasure was not exactly the same as when he had done his eyebrows not so long ago (or his pimples in their own time), still the rub warmed the side of his face, from his cheeks up to his temples, the pleasure increasing as his ears faded away. Further, once he reached the cartilage just above the lobes (that were gone only a few days before) the pleasure converted in a kind of pain that still procured some masochist bliss. Although he had reached the point announcing the coming disappearance of his hearing organs, and thus once again the vanishing of a source of self-inflicted pleasing pain, he went on till his ears had vanished; till they were replaced with a pair of fleshy lumps, similar to his eyebrows. Once he was finished with them, he was again at loss, as he had been once he had been finished with his eyebrows, as he had been once when he had quit smoking; this empty feeling inside, fidgeting and giddy, unable to know what to do once he was deprived of the nicotine, suffering bouts of cold sweat, suffering nightmares.