Reliving the Pleasures and Perils of Offices

It’s been a while since I have formally inhabited an office. Though there are times, as a writer, when one constructs a make-do office, by heading out to a café or a library, to escape the ennui or annoyances of home: the doorbell, the erratic internet, family interruptions. In her short story, The Office, Alice Munro similarly dwells on needing an office, despite or because she is a writer.

But of course, Munro’s protagonist is tugged by familiar guilt – can a woman really shut out domestic responsibilities in the way a man can, by simply slamming a door and ignoring needy children or partners? But a quiet space is only one reason to inhabit an office. It’s also to evoke some of the positive vibes that accompany real offices – I’m talking about the old-fangled physical ones here – not the virtual or hybrid ones, populated with Zoom screens.

What I recall about my own office experience more than the work we did, were the merry times we had. Especially in the earlier years, when I occupied the lower rungs, where we could behave as school and college kids do: crack insider jokes, imitate bosses, snipe about colleagues, gossip in lunchrooms and around chai dispensers, and every once-in-awhile lock our collective brains into a team task and accomplish the seemingly impossible. Only a few might acknowledge this, but leaders possibly have only half the fun of newbies and juniors.

So re-reading Then We Came To The End was a means of reliving the early days when our heads were stuffed not only with I-thoughts but with We-thoughts. As in, We suspect that so-and-so is applying for a job because We heard that X bumped into Y at a job fair. In Joshua Ferris’ book, the characters work for an ad agency that is starting to experience layoffs. Employees not only have to contend with the usual tribulations of office work – the petty politicking, the grunge tasks, disenchanted clients or bosses – but also with the persistent fear of being led to the gallows.

For employees saddled with loans and a family and dimming career prospects, a termination is akin to an execution: like prisoners awaiting the dreaded roll-call, the cubicle dwellers await each hour with terror. They survive with grim humor and a fraught fellowship – after all, how much can you wholly champion the other’s well-being if you would rather they are let go in your stead?

To take their minds off the “austerity measures” and pink slips, the office occupies itself with personal and cubicle going-ons. There’s talk about the boss who has breast cancer; or about someone else who is stealing stuff. Or about a third person who plays pranks – like stuffing sushi rolls behind a bookshelf, so that, in a few days, it emits a bewildering and nauseous odor. Folks both love and hate their colleagues: “Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled.”

Then there are certain coworkers who share a distinct chemistry. For instance, Marcia Dwyer can tell Genevieve pretty much everything, and Genevieve will understand exactly what Marcia is talking about. After a particular meeting, Marcia sends Genevieve one of those pointed emails: “It is really irritating to work with irritating people.” Except that Marcia ends up shooting the email to 65 people, and not just to Genevieve. Jim Jackers responds with a self-conscious: “Are you talking about me?” Later, when Marcia joins the lunch table, someone mutters: “It is really irritating to work with irritating people.”

They wonder why their boss – petite and commandeering – turns up at work when she’s scheduled to go into surgery soon. But then work is like that – a strange addiction, a type of forgetting. An escape from the discomfort of being with one’s thoughts. Maybe the adage about death bed thoughts, about no one regretting fewer hours spent at the office doesn’t quite get it; maybe offices have been a means to evade thoughts of dying. As necessary and as corrosive to one’s soul as families can be.

The book is set in a time that now seems long past – when the dotcoms were collapsing – and white-collar workers had to deal with the fragility of their existence, despite their fancy degrees and jargon-filled know-how. Today the precariousness of all our lives has only grown starker. Hence this hilarious and snarky take on working life, with all its absurdities and conceits, is well worth visiting.

It’s comedic but also moving. It depicts the poignancy and humanity of those who are anonymized by suits. And also amplifies how much and how little we really know of those who work closely with us. For those who are fans of “The Office” series or of Dilbert comics, this book is likely to resonate. It might even compel some of the reluctant hybrids to return to the water cooler era.

References

Joshua Ferris, Then We Came To The End, Little Brown and Company, New York, 2007