The Expendable
Employee
Several years ago I was in desperate need of a job. I was stupid;
I got pissed off and walked out of my old job. I left my job with security,
with benefits, with a steady paycheck. I was frustrated and made a knee jerk
decision that would haunt me for the rest of my life. I had been unemployed for
several months when a friend contacted me about an opportunity for work. I
jumped at it like one off those trained dolphins going for the fish. It was a
low paying office center job, you know, sit in a box all day with headphones on
answering the phone. It didn’t matter to me as long as I could keep the lights on;
I had ate threw my savings up while I wasn’t working. I aced my interview, I knew
I would. If I can get a face to face, I can get hired. I should have been a
used car salesman the way I could sell myself. After a couple of weeks
training, they put me on the floor. Thank god, because there was no way I could
have dealt with the trainer one more day. She was a little mousey type woman
who just hated. I don’t know everything she hated, but I knew she hated me.
From the first day I stepped foot into the office, I could tell Mary had it in
for me. All through training, no matter who made a mistake, she would call me
out as an example. She was constantly hovering over me throughout the day.
There one only one person she seemed to despise more than me, this poor shabby
looking guy at the end of my row. He wasn’t new like me, he had been there
awhile. From what I gathered from over hearing my coworkers talking, he was a
strange one. He was apparently homeless; he had been sleeping in his car in the
parking garage. He would use the showers in the locker rooms to clean himself
after everyone had gone for the night. I had even seen him sleeping on the
couch a time or two in the break room. He talked to himself quite a bit,
holding what looked like conversations. After my two week training was over we
were assigned our cubicles. They two seaters, with a half wall built in the
middle to separate the working spaces. Guess who Mary put me with, that’s
right, the psycho. He introduced himself as Matt, he seemed to be able to keep it
together when he was talking with me, so we got on ok. I didn’t really talk to
him, actually I didn’t really talk to anyone else I worked with either. This
was only a temporary gig for me, as soon as I found a decent paying job I was
out. I didn’t want to go making friends with people I had only planned on being
around for just a few months. Even though I didn’t talk to these people, I
still listened to them. Not a one of them had a nice thing to say about Matt
while he wasn’t around, a couple of them didn’t have anything nice to say even
when he was sitting right there. One day after taking my break, I decided to
grab a soda before heading back to my desk. I hit the button on the machine and
as luck would have it, two dropped out on me. As I was passing Matt to sit
down, I realized I only ever seen him drinking water from an old McDonald’s cup
that he brought in with him. I set the extra drink down on the corner of his
desk without saying anything. I figured if he was homeless, he probably couldn’t
afford an extra soda and I really didn’t need it. He looked over at the soda
and then at me and quietly said thank you, I just nodded my head in recognition.
That’s how it went for the next several months, if anything extra fell from the
machine, I’d drop it on his desk. I’d pick up an extra burger and say they must
have put one in my mistake and off it to him. Drinks, snacks, candy, you name
it. If I was getting it I made sure he’d have something to. I didn’t necessarily
like the guy, but nobody should be treated the way those people treated him.
One day, Mary and our supervisor Abbey were standing next to our space. They
were talking about having to lay some people off because the in calls were too
low. Abbey was one of those older ladies who were trying desperately to hang on
to their youth. She acted like she was still in high school. She tried to
present herself like one of those pedestal girls. You know the type, when you
were young you would have donated a kidney if it meant she’d go to the movies
with you. She liked to dress in whatever the cool kids were wearing even though
the cool kids were probably twenty plus years younger than her. I’m pretty sure
she was probably the prom queen whenever she was in school. She probably got
her ticket punched by the quarterback of the football team and had to drop out
of school to deal with her teen mom situation. I’m guessing she got her GED
mail order but wasn’t bright enough to take any advance classes for a degree.
For as long as she’s been working here, I’m sure she started out like me and
just worked her way up. Mary suggested Matt for the first one to go, Abbey
agreed, said he was just strange and expendable enough. So they were going to
fire Matt, I didn’t want to be there when they told him. As it turns out I wasn’t
going to have to wait that long. I had gotten there a couple of hours before
him and set a candy bar and a drink on his desk. Before he was barely through
the door, the ladies and taken him and escorted him to Abbey’s office. Ten
minutes later they were walking him out. He was in tears, pleading with them
that he needed his job, but they walked him out anyway. After he was gone, I
could hear the office fill with laughter and snickering. I just put my head down
and ignored them, after all this was just temporary. As the day went on, this
got back to normal for the most part. Here and there people still joked about
what happened to Matt, but the office was now quieter. I heard the first pop.
It was loud and sharp, like someone smacking two flat rocks together. I took my
headphones off and sat there, but before I could register what had happened
there was another loud pop, followed by screaming. I looked over the top of my
cubical as did the rest of the staff. We looked like a bunch prairie dogs from
one of those Trials of Life videos. As I looked across the way, my eyes met
with a girl named Ashley. Matt had finally built up the courage to ask her out
once only to be shot down and ridiculed in front of the entire office. We saw
one another for a split sec then her head snapped sideways and half of it was
gone with the ringing of another pop. You know in the movie when someone gets
blasted with a gunshot, the blood just flys all over the place, splattering on
everything. That’s not how it really happens, sure some does splatter, but it
mostly just pulses out of the wound. I shook the shock out and looked towards
the noise. There was Matt, he was walking through the office door with a pump
action shotgun in his hands, he was currently reloading it. He an irritated yet
somewhat content looked about him. He had just finished loading and cocked his
gun when Abbey came out of her office to see what the commotion was. She caught
a round in the stomach and crumpled to the floor. He leveled the weapon and
started walking in; anyone who met his gaze was slain instantly. I ducked back
behind my wall and crawled under my desk and started to cry, I’m pretty sure I
might have even wet myself. The screaming is what made me plug my ears; you’d
think it would have been the concussion of blasts reverberating in my ears. No,
definitely the screams, especially the ones that were cut abruptly or those
that just wheezed out of existence. I couldn’t tell for how long the massacre
continued but it finally stopped. There was nothing, no noise, no cries, no
bangs from the gun. I slowly looked over the wall out at the office. There were
bodies strewn about the walk ways, arms and legs protruded out from under
desks. Mary lay slumped forward over her keyboard, she still had on her special
noise cancelling headset on along with a giant hole in the back of her head. From
behind me I heard someone say “Hay”, that time I definitely knew had shit my
pants. I slowly turned around and looked at Matt. He had blood and bits of gray
slush clinging to his shirt and pants. He looked over at the Soda and food on
his desk; he set the shotgun down against his chair. He picked up his snacks
and looked back at me. We stared at one another for a moment. He smiled his big
crazy smile at me and said “Thanks for the snacks!” Then he just walked out of
the office. I never saw him again, I’ll never forget him. From that day
forward, whenever I meet someone at work that everyone had labeled odd, strange
or just crazy, well that person is my new best friend. At the end of the day, I’ll
take a blood soaked thank you over a sucking chest wound.
