-Copy code #0214-
This is the beginning of Cupid's Spreadsheet. It is a story about an office grouch who finds a piece of paper listing local couples destined to fall in love, and about the choices a loveless person might make when he discovers he is holding the bolts of affection.
Jacob thought he knew every departmental copy code, until the unfamiliar #0214 entered the top of the queue. If he'd blinked, he would have missed it. The copier the tech guys had dubbed "Sloth" picked up the job, and the number disappeared from the mailroom terminal. Someone else might have rubbed both eyes and convinced himself that he'd been mistaken. Someone else might have ignored it altogether, this being a busy Monday. But Jacob was unfailingly suited to the mailroom: too efficient to be promoted, too abrasive to be fired. So he put the company envelopes he'd been sorting into the pine box for unsorted company envelopes, and stalked past copiers Envy, Lust, and Gluttony, (all of them occupied by shrinking interns he would later take to task for setting their foam coffee cups on the paper trays) and stood before the offending Sloth. No one manned it. A single 8.5 x 14 inch page dropped into the lower tray, and the machine fell back into powersave mode.
He curled his dry lip and studied the paper, a spreadsheet with two columns for names, one for dates and times, and another for locations. No part of the table mentioned anything financial, nor did the style resemble any of the business templates. This only made it worse, to his way of thinking. Someone had pushed to the top of the queue, and for something most likely not workrelated. Though he was too low in the company hierarchy to devour delinquent full time employees, the head of the mailroom enjoyed watching the more powerful animals feast. He would gather what information was available for the bosses, and position himself to view the spectacle.
Oddly, the original was no longer on the glass. Even if someone had spirited it away the moment the green light had passed the length of the paper, Sloth should have churned out the copy less than five seconds later - he counted every day to make sure each machine operated at peak efficiency.
And if that was still accurate - and if the mailroom computer was still accurate - he should have seen the owner of this copy retreating. And why didn't that person wait? And where were they now?
That someone could push their way to the top without consulting him or the mailroom assistant was a surprise, and to his way of thinking, an unpleasant one. Jacob was not capable of giving up an ounce of power, however petty the circumstance. He was also not capable of walking from cubicle to cubicle with the offending document. Sniffing out the culprit that way would invite denial, defensiveness, and would be terribly inefficient. He could have interrogated the jittery interns, but he knew they never learned names outside the team designed to coordinate their activities.
Far easier to match copy code #0214 to the guilty department. He could hardly wait, but the morning mail came first.
Jacob thought he knew every departmental copy code, until the unfamiliar #0214 entered the top of the queue. If he'd blinked, he would have missed it. The copier the tech guys had dubbed "Sloth" picked up the job, and the number disappeared from the mailroom terminal. Someone else might have rubbed both eyes and convinced himself that he'd been mistaken. Someone else might have ignored it altogether, this being a busy Monday. But Jacob was unfailingly suited to the mailroom: too efficient to be promoted, too abrasive to be fired. So he put the company envelopes he'd been sorting into the pine box for unsorted company envelopes, and stalked past copiers Envy, Lust, and Gluttony, (all of them occupied by shrinking interns he would later take to task for setting their foam coffee cups on the paper trays) and stood before the offending Sloth. No one manned it. A single 8.5 x 14 inch page dropped into the lower tray, and the machine fell back into powersave mode.
He curled his dry lip and studied the paper, a spreadsheet with two columns for names, one for dates and times, and another for locations. No part of the table mentioned anything financial, nor did the style resemble any of the business templates. This only made it worse, to his way of thinking. Someone had pushed to the top of the queue, and for something most likely not workrelated. Though he was too low in the company hierarchy to devour delinquent full time employees, the head of the mailroom enjoyed watching the more powerful animals feast. He would gather what information was available for the bosses, and position himself to view the spectacle.
Oddly, the original was no longer on the glass. Even if someone had spirited it away the moment the green light had passed the length of the paper, Sloth should have churned out the copy less than five seconds later - he counted every day to make sure each machine operated at peak efficiency.
And if that was still accurate - and if the mailroom computer was still accurate - he should have seen the owner of this copy retreating. And why didn't that person wait? And where were they now?
That someone could push their way to the top without consulting him or the mailroom assistant was a surprise, and to his way of thinking, an unpleasant one. Jacob was not capable of giving up an ounce of power, however petty the circumstance. He was also not capable of walking from cubicle to cubicle with the offending document. Sniffing out the culprit that way would invite denial, defensiveness, and would be terribly inefficient. He could have interrogated the jittery interns, but he knew they never learned names outside the team designed to coordinate their activities.
Far easier to match copy code #0214 to the guilty department. He could hardly wait, but the morning mail came first.
posted by Benedict | 11:49 PM
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