Bentley Little: The Ignored

“Programmers necessarily have to develop and maintain a high level of concentration,” Stewart said. “Don’t take it personally if they’re not always as talkative as they should be.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“You’ll be working closely with the programmers once you become involved in systems documentation. You’ll find out they’re not as antisocial as they first appear.”

We walked out of the programming area and past a series of glass-walled rooms where testing and other peripheral activities were performed. He introduced me to Hope Williams, the department secretary, and Lois and Virginia, the two women from the steno pool we shared with the third floor.

Then it was time to check out my office.

My office.

The word “office” had conjured in my mind the image of a spacious room. Plush carpeting, wood paneling, an oak desk. A window with a view. Bookshelves. Something akin to what Banks had. Instead, I was led into a small, narrow cubicle slightly bigger than my parents’ walk-in closet. There were two desks here, ugly metal behemoths that took up almost all available space and were situated side by side, with only walking room between them. Both desks faced a blank wall, a white add-on separated into even segments by thin metal connecting strips running lengthwise from floor to ceiling. Behind them was a row of gray metal filing cabinets.

Seated at the desk nearest the door was an old man with a crown of white hair and the small, hard eyes and belligerent stare of the terminally petty. He glared at me as I stepped into the office.

This was his domain and I was trespassing, and he wanted me to know it.

All the hopes I’d had of coming into an interesting job in a pleasant working environment died finally and forever as I forced myself to nod and smile at the man Stewart introduced to me simply as “Derek.”

“Hello,” Derek said dryly. His features had a cast of blunt ignorance: pug nose, small mouth with jutting lower lip, tiny intolerant eyes. It was a face that showed no patience to members of ethnic groups, other generations, or the opposite sex. He reached across his desk, took my proffered hand, and shook, but it was clear from the expression on his face that I was too young for serious consideration. His palm was cold and clammy, and he immediately sat back down and pretended to ignore me, scribbling something on a piece of paper in front of him.

“Well give you an hour or so to get settled. Derek here’ll show you the ropes, won’t you?”

The old man looked up, nodded noncommittally.

“You can go through your desk, keep what you’ll need, toss out what you don’t want. After break, maybe, I’ll drop by and we can start going over your first assignment.”

As with Banks, there were several levels at work here. The surface words were standard, noncommittal, but there was an undercurrent in Stewart’s delivery that let me know that, however hard I might try, I would never be part of the “team.”

“I’ll catch you later,” Stewart said. Once again, he shook my hand, pressing hard, and then he was gone.

I moved past Derek’s desk in the crowded, suddenly silent office and over to my own. I sat down awkwardly in the ancient swivel chair provided me.

This was not working out the way I’d expected. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I guess I’d thought it would be like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I’d seen the movie on TV when I was little, and while I had never even considered a career in business, that film had glamorized the corporate world for me, instilling within me a vision that not even years of subsequently grittier and more realistic movies had been able to erase entirely.

But the cleanly stylized offices and boardrooms through which Robert Morse sang were a far cry from the cramped and claustrophobic quarters in which I now found myself.

I opened the drawers of my desk, but I didn’t know what to clean out. I didn’t know enough about my job to know what I would and wouldn’t need.

I glanced over at Derek. He smiled at me, but the smile was not quick enough to cover the hard expression that had been in its place a second before.

“New jobs,” he said, shaking his head as though sympathetically identifying with a common experience.

“Yeah,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

I looked at the top of my desk. Both the metal in box and out box were full, and a selection of books were stacked next to them: Roget’s Thesaurus, Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Creating Creative Technical Manuals, Dictionary of Computer Terminology.

Creating technical manuals? Computer terminology? I felt like a fraud already, even though I hadn’t officially started my work. What did I know about this stuff?

I was still not sure of my duties exactly. Lisa had given me a single-page job description, but it was filled with the same vague wording as the one handed to me at the interview. I had a general idea of what was required of me, but the specific tasks I was supposed to perform, the precise requirements of my position had never been spelled out to me, and I felt lost. I thought of asking Derek about it — he was, after all, supposed to be showing me “the ropes” — but when I glanced again in his direction, he was looking too intently and too obviously at a typed sheet of paper, and I knew that he did not want to talk to me.

Following his lead, I removed the stack of papers from my in box and, one by one, began sorting through them. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it didn’t seem to matter. Derek said nothing to me, and I continued to look at each page, pretending I knew what I was doing.

It was an hour later when the phone on my desk buzzed twice, although it felt to me as though five hours had passed.

“Mr. Stewart,” Derek said, speaking his first words since the enigmatic “New jobs.” He nodded toward the phone. “Press star seven.”

I picked up the receiver, pressed the asterisk button and the number seven on the console. “Hello?” I said.

“No.” Stewart’s voice was strong and disapproving. “When you answer the phone, you say, ‘Interoffice Procedures and Phase II Documentation. Bob Jones speaking.’”

“Sorry,” I said. “No one told me.”

“Now you’ve been told. I don’t want to catch you answering the phone incorrectly again.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“I may have forgotten to mention it,” Stewart said, “but you are entitled to two fifteen-minute breaks and an hour lunch each day. Your breaks will be taken at ten in the morning and three in the afternoon. Your lunch will be from noon until one. Your break may be spent at your desk or in the fourth-floor break room. You may leave the building and spend your lunch wherever you want as long as you return to your desk by one.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

The phone clicked in my ear, and I looked down for a moment, panicked. I’d been fiddling with the phone cord, and I thought I might have accidentally cut him off, but my hand was nowhere near the cradle, and I realized that he had simply hung up on me.

I replaced the handset and glanced over at Derek. “Where’s the break room?” I asked.

He did not look up. “End of the hall, turn right.”

“Thanks,” I said, walking past his desk and out the door.

The break room was small, the size of the living room in our apartment. There was a refrigerator and a soft-drink machine against one wall, a dilapidated couch against another, and two mismatched dining room tables in the center. The room smelled of old ladies, of closeted linen and cloying perfume. Underneath, more lightly, I detected a stale scent that was either refrigerated lunches or lingering body odor.