You knock carefully on your boss' office door, after having spent the last 10 minutes very slowly walking up the stairs. You were early, and you didn't want to just wander around aimlessly. People would pass you on the staircase very pleasantly saying hello, but all you could do was mumble nervously and try to avoid them as they carried files or rushed into meetings.
"Come in, come in!" he says, in his reverberating baritone.
"Thank you, sir," you say and immediately regret. In one sentence you have (a) forgotten that you are supposed to assert yourself in these matters, and (b) sounded like Bob Cratchit from A Christmas Carol. You congratu-fucking-late yourself.
"Just have a seat there." He motions you to a post in the floor. You take a moment to remove the broomstick tightly lodged in your ass, and, with a wince, sit squarely on one of the posts in front of his safety-glass desk. You notice that the posts had recently been sanded; a client must be stopping by today. You set your broomstick at your feet.
"Three years. Wow. Hasn't it just rushed by?" He smiles and folds his hands on his desk, and you chuckle nervously in agreement. "It seems like just yesterday I handed you your broomstick and welcomed you to the company."
Uncomfortable silence.
He continues, "The first thing I want you to know is that you've done an excellent job here. I can't begin to tell you how positive an impact you have on your co-workers, and the awesome work you do every day." He didn't begin.
"And I want to remind you that these reviews aren't just about me talking to you about your performance, but a three-hundred-sixty degree discussion about your work here," he said as he pointed up at the air and made a turntable-like motion with his finger.
"My door is always open, and I always have a place for you to sit." He pushed his chair back and put his left foot on his desk, affording you a clear view of his crotch. He took a moment to alter the way his pants were pleating in his lap.
"Thank you," you say, still adjusting to the different thickness of the floor-post.
"So I know this has been a rough year for you," he said, looking at your broomstick on the floor. It's badly pitted and splintered. Even though you try and sand it when you can, sometimes you just don't have time.
"A little, yeah," you say, forcing a wan smile.
"It's been hard for all of us," he says. "We're all under a lot of pressure these days, and it sets us all on edge." He arranged the pens on his desk so they were all parallel. "I know you've had some issues with co-workers this year."
You knew this was going to come up, so it's not as if you're surprised. He asks, "I don't think I ever heard the whole story. Could you explain what happened?"
"Sure," you say. "She came by my desk, and wanted to hand off her broomstick to me, and asked if I could take it out of her ass. You know she keeps it barbed — for whatever reason, I don't know — and being unfamiliar, I asked her first about the best way to remove it.
"She apparently wanted it done without questions, so she wondered very loudly about why my attitude was so poor, and why, since the situation was so simple — 'remove broomstick from ass' — I couldn't just take care of it. She also apparently spent a lot of overtime barbing her broomstick, and felt like I was not giving her due respect for the work she did on it.
"I didn't feel quite right about it, so that's why I told my managers about it. There was an enquiry into the situation, but all they determined was that I should not have asked any questions, and that I should expect conflicts of this nature to arise again."
"You did the right thing by going to your managers," he said. "I know you always are looking for ways to improve yourself, and that was a smart thing to do."
You cough. "Right ... right. Thanks."
"So," he continued, "I want to discuss with you first about the review form you wrote." Every year, employees are given a form to fill out. It's three pages of nebulous questions that you're expected to write answers to by hand. How have you made your broomstick better? What are your goals for your broomstick over the next year? In what ways can the company better utilize your broomstick? No matter how honestly you answer the questions, they're never quite answered completely enough.
"Of course," you start, trying on that assertion thing you neglected earlier. "I think you'd —"
"The thing I think I noticed most," he started, as if you hadn't said anything at all, "was that you appeared dissatisfied in your review form."
You wrote that you had a great deal of overtime through the last year, and since you were a salaried employee, you didn't see any benefit from it. The company, of course, makes money from the time you spend with your broomstick, so they're essentially getting your work for free.
"Well, it's not to say I'm dissatisfied, exactly," you backpedal. Why you're backpedaling you're not sure, because you actually are dissatisfied. You're getting a broomstick shoved up your ass every day. Why they hell wouldn't you be dissatisfied? "Yes, there are things that I think could improve, but I think saying I'm dissatisfied overall is a bit too harsh."
"Mmm hmm." He tents his fingers. "And so what would you call it, then?"
"Call what, exactly?"
"Your opinion of your broomstick." He stares.
There's no right answer to this question. If you say good, then you're lying. If you say something neutral, like determined or productive then that's 30 minutes of your life you'll never get back discussing why what you said is somehow false. "I'm not really good at putting labels on things," you uncomfortably settle on.
"Isn't that ... what we do here?" Your eyes settle on a plaque on his desk, and remember that you work for Fit-Right Broomstick Labels, Inc, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BroomTastic Technologies of America Corporation.
More uncomfortable silence.
He gets up from his chair in a dramatic fashion and puts his hands behind his back. You shift on your seat, as much as you can, to try and watch him get up, but the manner in which you're sitting makes it difficult to be anything more than hunched over. He turns around and faces the window behind his desk, and starts a speech that you know he'd rehearsed last night in front of the mirror.
"You know, I have a broomstick in my ass, too," he says. He nods toward a broomstick leaning against his desk. It's machined titanium and designed by F.A. Porsche. Near the sweep, it was very ornately engraved Make it Happen.
"We all have our broomsticks to deal with. I'm finding it difficult how you can reasonably expect that your broomstick is somehow more burdensome than anyone else's in the office." He turns and raises his eyebrows, but all you can see is his black silhouette against the afternoon sky outside.
"Sir, it's not that I feel singled out or somehow unfairly targeted by the company, but I'm finding it harder and harder to ignore that my broomstick is getting longer every day. When I work at home, I'm banging into things. I hit my wife the other day with it by mistake, and she made me sleep on the couch. It's become a real point of stress in my life. I felt the need to bring it up because I thought now would be a good time." You swallow, expecting the wrath of God to fall upon you.
"I see." He sits back down again, and put his elbows on the table. He leans forward, and says quietly, "so you ... are ... dissatisfied with your broomstick, then."
Plucking up what courage you have, you straighten and say, "I am dissatisfied with the length of my broomstick, yes."
"I see."
He sits there, tenting his fingers, and considers you for perhaps 10 seconds. He judges you with his stare.
"Sir, I don't want it to appear as if I don't appreciate my employment here. I have a great opportunity at Fit-Right. But there are things I want to do with my time — my time — that my broomstick doesn't allow. And that —"
"No! You're right." He walks around to the edge of his desk and sits, looking at you from a high angle. "A healthy work-life balance is important. And I know I can stand here and dictate to you what you can and can't do with your broomstick. But — if I can play back to you what I'm hearing — what I'm hearing is that you can't deal with the stress of your job."
"No! That's not ... perhaps I'm not making myself clear," you stammer, not wanting to appear inept. Or whiny. You aren't sure what's worse. There's an unremarkable spot on the floor that has suddenly become very interesting.
"It's very clear, actually. It's nothing to worry about. We've had a lot of people leave, and I know your broomstick has grown — apparently to the point where it's uncomfortable.
"And I want to help you out."
The last sentence you didn't expect. The bright spot that you never thought you'd never see in this office suddenly appears, and it's glorious. Hesitantly, you look up from staring at your feet and see the smiling face of a man who is a husband and a father. Someone who might actually care about you. Someone who sees you more than just as a line item in a spreadsheet. Someone who might actually know that you don't like milk in your coffee.
"I want to personally make sure that you're happy working here," he says. "Here. Hand me your broomstick." He takes it in a firm grip and cuts two feet of handle off the end. You sigh with relief at the sight of it, because now it wouldn't even touch the floor when you walk.
"Do you want this?" he said as he held up the severed end of the broomstick.
"Not really, no," you laugh, as he tosses it into his wastebasket with a flourish.
"I didn't think so." He sits back down with the remaining end of your newly-shortened broomstick, and produces a penknife.
You both make small-talk about baseball, about cars. He whittles away the hard edges of the cut he made. You watch him at work, smiling and chatting, and when he arrives at a particular soft roundness at the end, you wonder how long you've been sitting here.
He continues on a story about a vacation trip he recently took, and you find it hard to ignore that the pile of spruce curls at his feet is still getting larger. As you "mm hmm" and "oh, really" your way through his story, he comes to the end and looks up.
Your eyes meet a very tidy, symmetrical point he carved the end of your broomstick.
"Excellent," he says. "This was a good meeting. I really want to thank you for contributing to this process. It makes us all better."
Finding it hard to erase the look of shock from your face, you quietly say "thank you." He hands you your broomstick and smiles.
"Have a wonderful day," he says, standing up.
So you stand carefully, and now wish you could have something a little more like the post on the floor. As you leave, you take your new broomstick, and shove it up your own ass.
And you realize that by sticking around, that's what you've been doing this whole time.