On the Way to Work

I’m sat staring out of my window, on my seat, on my bus going back to my job on yet another day of my life. This journey that I take so often, lasts around fifteen minutes – I do it nearly every single day of the working week; fifteen minutes going and fifteen minutes coming back. That adds up to half an hour, every day; five days a week.
I work most weeks, minus two weeks holiday and four bank holidays a year. Sometimes I’ll get more than one bank holiday off but that’s rare because there’s only ever more than four bank holidays in a year if Christmas Eve, Day, Boxing Day & New Years Eve & Day all fall on weekends.
That never really happens though.
By my calculations I estimate that that means I spend roughly around seven thousand five hundred minutes a year sitting on this bus alone; usually in this same seat; looking at the same things, out of the same window, every single day.
I’ve worked in my job for five years now. I don’t like it – the only thing that keeps me coming back every day is the money.
Here I am as the bus comes to a laboured shuddering halt right at my stop. I’m standing up and shuffling towards the exit, ready to walk along my route to my job where I’ll perform tasks to make my money to continue my life. I’m running late.

Now I walk along dirty slabs of concrete and glistening blackened tarmac decorated with painted lines and markings that instruct people as to what they can and can’t do on particular pieces of ground. I stop at a street kiosk and buy a beverage which I pour right into my mouth. It burns me as it gurgles down my neck, travelling between my lungs and slipping down into my stomach. I look at the vendor. He has closely knitted brows that bristle and flex like a caterpillar; underlining a low furrowed brow that’s creased with time and impatience. There is a fleeting eye contact between us and an almost imperceptible glimmer of recognition somewhere in his eyes,

I continue walking. It is raining.

My head is wet, my temples are scythed with chilled rivulets of water that course down my shaven cheeks and moisten the starched white stiffness of my shirt, my collar; my boundary. I walk and I briefly look into the eyes of a woman pressed against the glass as she dresses a plastic mannequin in a shop window. It reminds me unsurprisingly of a fish tank or perhaps a pen at a zoo. She’s pretty. Dark waved hair tumbles around and about her shoulders and her tanned skin as she strains, dressing her model in a suit. He looks just like me, only much stiffer and drier.

Thunder booms out. It is rolling across the open plains of the sky at this ungodly hour and I know what it will bring with it - a need to be indoors. My pace has quickened and my head is lowered, I pull the collar of my damp jacket up in an effort to keep my neck dry – it doesn’t work.
The steady beat of the rain seems to increase and the greyness that is all around me seems to be getting thicker with every passing second. A pause for thought and I stop in a doorway of a nearby shop, its eight fifty in the morning and there still isn’t really anybody around on the street that surrounds me. If I was a little more romantic I could say that the deserted street is beautiful in this light and that when I close my eyes the repetitive hum and splash of the rain reminds me of when I was a child and the sprinkler on our lawn back home would splatter water loudly against the driveway, the windows and the leaves of all of our plants. I could say that the sound reminds me of the way the sunlight made a rainbow as it shone through the spray in the correct way. I could say that it reminds me of a carefree and happy youth. I’m not a romantic though and I’m running late so I step back into the gloom and grimly stalk the streets thinking that I’d rather be anywhere right now than here.

Maybe I don’t go in today. Maybe I just go right back home so I can sit in the warmth of my couch pouring drinks down my throat and filling my mouth with food. Maybe I sit reading my newspaper at a leisurely rate, smoking as many cigarettes as I like even though I know they’re bad for me. Maybe I sit around all day not doing a thing and not caring about what those fucking suits back at my office have to say about it.

Now I’m nearly there. My office is only another six minutes away. I’m late but I know that I don’t really care, I’ll take the stairs up and sneak in the back way so that my supervisor won’t see me. Bob Phillips doesn’t approve of tardiness so I need to avoid him. It’s Bob Phillips who is my leader. Bob Phillips is in charge of me.
Working below Bob Phillips means life under a firm but fair boss. Working under Bob Phillips means that no slacking is to be tolerated. Working for Bob Phillips means that I am a cog in a superbly oiled machine, frightening in efficiency and unwavering in superiority.
Working as a minion in the domain of Bob Phillips also means getting used to being taken aside to receive minor rebukes and kind hearted pieces of advice. He calls them chats.

As I journey now, I begin to think. I slowly become aware that if I receive another man to man chat from Bob Phillips then it may well be the end of me. It will be the end of my job for sure and it may well even be the end of my freedom too because if I receive another man to man chat from Bob Phillips then I may well commit murder. I may well just lift my arms so I can put my angry hands around his throat, using my force to snuff out his sounds and his little motivational speeches.
Oh how I hate his speeches.
Bob Phillips is a good man, I just hate his ways and his lousy corporate talk, pummelling my ears until they want to retract themselves inside my skull like a tortoise’s head, deep, deep, safely inside.

I don't care Bob Phillips. I wish you would be quiet. Be silent and leave me alone. Just please leave me alone.

I need to hurry up or I’m going to be late. That will mean I get a dressing down. And that will mean that I will kill him. For the sake of Bob Phillips wife and children (who I know to be lovely people) and the Bobless life that they must never lead I decide to run the final distance all the way to the front door of my employers. I get even more wet as I run and I feel irritated.

The weather diagnosis is always fucking wrong.

My socks are wet and my trousers are sticking to my thin pale legs and my hairy knobbled knees. I know I must look a fool but I also know I mustn’t be late.

Now I’m inside my building climbing up my stairs two, sometimes three at a time. I’m wet all over and now I’m sweating thanks to a change in my temperature. I look bad so I steal into the toilets to clean myself up. This is no real change from my usual routine because even when I’m on time I usually sit in one of the toilet cubicles for a while, killing a few precious minutes before I go back inside to work and clock watch. I don’t like it in these toilets but I like it more than my office with its neon post-it notes and beloved photographs pasted and placed all around the desk spots. The notes introduce elements of “fun” to the workplace and the photographs discreetly remind my fellow drones why they are here and what awaits them when they leave.
This time though I’m not sitting in a cubicle glumly, I’m stood looking at myself in the mirror as I hold my shirt underneath the electric dryer which keeps turning itself off for absolutely no fucking reason whatsoever. My teeth are yellowed and my eyes are red, I look hung-over but I’m not. I don’t feel well but I don’t know why, maybe it’s this place with its white light and its myopic pale blue colouration. I’m sniffing as my nose runs uncontrollably and I think I might just be sick. I don’t know why I feel sick now when I felt fine before, the sporadic droning of the drier seems way off in the distance; a mere rumble like the thunder I heard only minutes before; it makes me nauseous.
This job, I hate it. I do it for the money.

I am soaked to my skin.

Now here in these toilets, Bob Phillips has entered. He sees me standing here all wet with a faraway look in the holes of my eyes. I am pale and moist; I’m almost an entire puddle in a suit. I know he’s going to give me a talking to. I know it when he gives me that condescending look of pity, the one that is married to his white smile, the one he delivers with empathy and compassion.

I like you Bob Phillips but I hate your words and I hate your ways. In many respects I think that I actually hate you. Yes. I hate what you stand for Bob Phillips. I think I hate you…

Now I feel horribly nauseous and as I turn to look at him I know exactly what I’m about to do. I know he’s not going to like it one bit but I don’t care. We make eye contact as my stomach contracts and there is a moment of understanding between us that could be described as profound. I grip him by the lapels and I’m looking at him full in the face as my mouth opens.

I’m sorry Bob.

Its five minutes later and I’m running down the stairs. I slip a little bit with every step on the linoleum floor as my desire to leave overwhelms me. I’m smiling and I’m a little embarrassed but I don’t stop for a second. I don’t feel sick anymore. Bob Phillips needs cleaning up but I don’t really care. I run outside again into the rain which falls hard all around me and now I pull my tie loose. The rain refreshes me.
I walk homeward bound through the streets at my own pace and I decide not to get back on my bus.

Now I’m looking all around me as I stroll. I raise my face up to look at the sky and the rain tumbles down upon me like thousands and thousands of the tiniest shards of clear painless glass. Its grey everywhere but I know that I just don’t care anymore.