Jonas Karlsson - The Room

The second time I went into the room I was looking for photocopy paper. I was determined to manage on my own. Despite all the exhortations to ask about things, I was unwilling to expose myself to humiliation and derision by displaying gaps in my knowledge of the set-up. I had come to recognise the little stress wrinkles they all got whenever I did actually ask. Obviously they weren’t to know that I was aiming to get to the top of the Authority. To become someone who commanded respect. And I didn’t want to give Håkan any excuse to indulge his work-avoidance.

So I checked everywhere, all the places where in the majority of offices you might expect to come across photocopy paper, but there was none to be found. Finally I made my way round the corner, past the toilets, where I had a feeling I had previously seen a small room.

At first I couldn’t find the light switch. I felt along the walls on either side of the door, and in the end I gave up, walked out again and found the switch on the outside. What an odd place to put it, I thought, and went back in.

It took a moment for the fluorescent light to flicker into life, but I was quickly able to ascertain that there was no photocopy paper there. Even so, I got an immediate sense that there was something special about this place.

It was a fairly small room. A desk in the middle. A computer, files on a shelf. Pens and other office equipment. Nothing remarkable. But all of it in perfect order.

Neat and tidy.

Against one wall stood a large, shiny filing cabinet with a desk fan on top of it. A dark-green carpet covered the floor. Clean. Free from dust. Everything neatly lined up. It looked slightly studied. Prepared. As if the room were waiting for someone.

I went out, closed the door and switched off the light. Out of curiosity I opened the door again. I got a feeling I had to check. How could I be sure the light wasn’t still on in there? Suddenly I felt uncertain whether up or down meant on or off. The whole idea of having the switch on the outside felt strange. A bit like the light inside a fridge. I peered in at the room. It was dark.

The next day my new boss came over to our desk in the big, open-plan office, with his thinning hair and cotton cardigan. His name was Karl, and the cotton cardigan wasn’t very new, but looked expensive. He stopped next to Håkan and pointed out, without any introductory pleasantries, that my shoes were dirty.

‘We try to think about the floor,’ he said, pointing at a metal basket full of blue plastic shoe-covers hanging on the wall right next to the entrance.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Naturally.’

He patted me on the shoulder and walked away.

I thought it was strange that he didn’t smile. Don’t people usually try to smooth over that sort of remark with a little smile? To show that you’re still friends, and make me, as the newcomer, feel welcome? It wasn’t nice, getting told off as bluntly as that. It had a serious impact on my work and I sat there for a long while with an uncomfortable feeling that I’d just been taught a lesson. It was annoying that I hadn’t thought about the shoe-covers myself. Obviously I would have done if I’d had time to think about it.

He had managed to make me feel both stupid and insecure, when in actual fact I was one of the smartest. Besides, it was just rude to walk off like that. I counted the number of errors my boss had made during my short time there and came up with three. Plus one minor infraction. Three or four, then, depending on how you looked at it.

Håkan, who had obviously heard the whole thing, sat there unusually quietly, apparently preoccupied with some document. Carry on pretending, I thought. Carry on pretending.

I leaned down and undid my shoes even though I was in the middle of one of my fifty-five-minute work periods, and something like that really ought to be dealt with during one of the short breaks.

I looked around the room. Everyone was immersed in their own business. Yet it still felt as though they were all watching me as I walked, in just my socks, over to the small kitchen at the other end of the office and fetched a cloth. I cleaned up as best I could, fetched a pair of shoe-covers and put them over my shoes. They rustled as I took the cloth back. I tried to see if anyone else was wearing shoe-covers, but they were all wearing either slippers or normal shoes. Maybe they were indoor shoes, I thought.

I wrote a note and stuck it on my briefcase.

Buy slippers .

Then I went to the coffee-machine and got a cup of coffee. I reasoned that this fifty-five-minute period was already ruined. I would just have to sit it out and start again with the next one.

The bulb in the ceiling of the little kitchen was broken and needed changing. When I opened one of the cutlery drawers I discovered that there were plenty of new bulbs there. It would be a painless task to unscrew the broken one and replace it with a new one. It seemed odd that no one had done anything about such a simple problem.

The coffee was far too hot to drink straightaway. I had to keep moving it from hand to hand to avoid burning my fingers, so I thought I might as well take a turn around the department and try to build up my social network.

First I went over and stood beside John’s desk. But as I was standing there it struck me that it might be best to start with Ann, seeing as she, in purely geographic terms, was closest to me and Håkan. If I was going to expand my contacts, obviously I ought to start at the centre and work my way outward. Like ripples in water, I thought. Besides, John made a hopelessly bland impression. What did someone like that have to offer me? That I didn’t already have? It would be unfortunate for my profile to be seen with such an insipid individual from the older generation, and thus become associated with the colourless crowd.

Ann was a woman, of course, and I was reluctant to associate too intimately with women and risk seeming pushy or ingratiating, but I realised I could adopt a gender-neutral attitude to start with. It ought to help my modern image and demonstrate a certain intellectual flexibility. Besides, Ann was looking more and more like the social queen of the department. Whether I liked it or not, she seemed to be something of a spider at the centre of the web. I carried on to her desk and adopted a relaxed posture with my weight on one leg, so that she could be left in no doubt that I was amenable to having a conversation. She looked up at me and asked if I wanted help with something.

‘No,’ I said.

She went on working.

I stood there for a while, looking at the badly drawn child’s picture of a sunset, and wondered if she was aware of its flagrant inaccuracy. Maybe she was blinded by her emotional involvement? No matter what the circumstances, the child, or grandchild, deserved to be made aware of its mistake so that the error could be avoided next time. If things like that weren’t pointed out, its marks for drawing would certainly be negatively impacted.

After a while I became aware that the zip of my trousers, and thus my genitals within, were on exactly the same level as her face. So I shifted my body slightly to find a more neutral position and ended up standing right behind her chair, which also felt rather awkward. Particularly as she didn’t seem remotely bothered by me. I blew gently on the coffee and waited for her to say something. It was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable just standing there. Jörgen looked up at me briefly and I decided to give Ann ten seconds. Once they had passed I walked away, taking with me the clear message: I wasn’t welcome.