A customary greeting card was
passed around my office that day. The card was for me. The occasion was my last day at the
investment bank I’d been working for a little over a year. It was an easy
choice to leave. In fact I was surprised I’d slipped into the comfort of the
easy commute and ignored the reasons it was the wrong place for me to be working.
For me work always panned out to being another year another job, and finally I
was getting the hell out of this one. I perused the greeting card. There were a
few funny jokes, some nice personal well-wishers, and many generic good luck’s
followed by signatures. I looked a bit closer and saw that someone had written,
Best of Luck to you, Bartleby!
There
wasn’t a signature, but I knew the handwriting very well. She was on my team in
our department. We were close friends at some point, but no longer. She didn’t
speak to me anymore, so I was surprised. At first I was excited that she’d
written what seemed a nicety. But then I realized she was making a reference to, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” I swiveled in my chair to draft an e-mail to her. A
coworker interrupted my thoughts,
“Come
on let’s get out of here and go to the bar!!” I ignored him, distracted trying
to think of the nastiest, clever thing I could come up with. Of course it was so
silly, she wanted to light a fire under me and she succeeded. I got her message
loud and clear. Bartleby’s catchphrase was, “I would prefer not to.” And that
was her gripe with me: I never did work for her
only the other people on our team. The insinuation in her brilliant, cowardly
unsigned epithet was that I was lax on the job. The implication incensed me and I
came up with a reply in the five minutes I had. The best I came up with was, The
saying goes, everyone hates most what they see inside themselves. So best of luck
to YOU, Bartleby.
I hit Send as another coworker
came over saying,
“What
the hell are you doing, working??? Let’s get outta here.”
“Okay,”
I stood and caught my last glimpse of her, opening the e-mail as I left with a
group of people to the bar.
The bar was very close and before
I had my first drink in hand, I regretted sending the e-mail. I should’ve given
her the last laugh. We used to be friends, but she’d begun to isolate herself. It was what I thought great about her at first. But at some point
her anxiety led her to wearing a gas mask in her cubicle, a protest which amounted to nothing more than massive amounts of office gossip about the crazy lady
in the Legal department.
When we were still friendly she often told me the truth about banking, she’d been in and out of it for twenty years. The more I learned the more I was disturbed. She was far from being compartmentalized or ignorant to the world of banking, like myself and many of my young coworkers. She was simply indifferent to it. She was super sarcastic and often had me laughing out loud at her snide remarks. She also many times unloaded paranoid thoughts about New York; about the subways and anthrax. All of which I suspect was aggravated by our locale which offered a prime view of the financial district's ghostly empty spots where the twin towers once stood. She moved on to worrying she was getting a respiratory disease from the office we spent forty hours a week in. Hence her wearing a gas mask. This was the kind of stir she’d cause. Our office was ridiculous with conservative rules and silence, so her insanity was delighted in by many. I never understood why she didn’t just leave to another place. I couldn’t get why anyone would want to stir up so much shit at age forty-five.
When we were still friendly she often told me the truth about banking, she’d been in and out of it for twenty years. The more I learned the more I was disturbed. She was far from being compartmentalized or ignorant to the world of banking, like myself and many of my young coworkers. She was simply indifferent to it. She was super sarcastic and often had me laughing out loud at her snide remarks. She also many times unloaded paranoid thoughts about New York; about the subways and anthrax. All of which I suspect was aggravated by our locale which offered a prime view of the financial district's ghostly empty spots where the twin towers once stood. She moved on to worrying she was getting a respiratory disease from the office we spent forty hours a week in. Hence her wearing a gas mask. This was the kind of stir she’d cause. Our office was ridiculous with conservative rules and silence, so her insanity was delighted in by many. I never understood why she didn’t just leave to another place. I couldn’t get why anyone would want to stir up so much shit at age forty-five.
I felt awful as I pondered over this at the bar. It
seemed horrible to say that anyone is like Bartleby and have it be true. I had focused
on the I’d Prefer Not To aspect of Bartleby and forgotten the end of the tale
when Bartleby refuses to leave the office. Somehow that confirmed everything
I’d said in my response to her, which I then regretted even more.
I never spoke to her again. Odd that we would turn on each other considering we had the most in common at that conservative corporation—although one
of her theories included the office spiking the cafeteria’s food.
I hear she
went so crazy they had to fire her. Supposedly she made a real scene on her way out, one that
people only daydream of making when they hate their jobs.
