Just another monday evening

She looked up from her monitor and sat back. Her fingers were aching from the constant effort to tame the mouse to her will. The sun was well into its descent, nearing the point when it would bathe everything in a glow of red and orange. But right now it was still in a fiery mood, bowing head & bough alike in an unrelenting blaze.

She squinted outside through the narrow gap between the bottom of the blinds and the window sill. After hours under the stark lights that heightened the drear of the cream and blue walls, that strip of outside seemed like a land of golden treetops.

Looking back inside she saw through glass walls, the sea of cubicles that hemmed her in - cramping her, choking her, adding to her claustrophobia. People were milling about the floor with scant regard to the maze of cubicles that attempted to confine each to his/her own. Potted plants lined the walking space, breaking the monotony of the cream and black-grey. Through her 'sound-proofed' walls she could still hear faint traces of what must have been a mind-numbing cacophony of keystrokes, ringing phones and screeching printers.

The computer intruded into her thoughts with a beep, informing her of new mail. It was about the meeting next day. She was to make an extra presentation that prepped the visitors so that the Big Guns upstairs could go straight for the kill at the meeting. She tried closing the mail but it refused, the grotesque Office Assistant reminding her that she should add the appointment to her calendar.

It was going to be one of those days. The presentation and meeting would take all of the morning. And then she was to have lunch with the technical officers in the delegation. But beneath the subterfuge, it was going to be exquisite fencing - subtle comments, smooth repartees but all the time prodding, coaxing and squeezing out their true reactions to the earlier meeting. A draining lunch, in all. The post-lunch session would then meld into the post-dinner session when she would be cloistered with the other department heads in a marathon session that gauged reactions, evaluated response and rated the enthusiasm (or lack of it). All the numbers would then be based on this session, in stark disregard of all business principles. It was a classic victory of intuition over reason.

The ringing phone brought her back to the present. Some procurements officer wanted an appointment to discuss some problems with quality. It would have to wait until next week. The motley colors on her appointment calendar announced that her time had already been mercilessly carved up, some with and some without her consent. She was a prisoner in space-time (with due apologies to Einstein) !!

She turned back to that narrow strip of freedom at the window. Aaah ... what would she give to ecape from it all.

It was just another monday evening.

posted by RamV at 17:54 :: Permalink :: Blog This