It started with Jim hiding my stapler and ended with me dangling
him out of a 6th floor window by his ankles.
Jim was really popular when he started at Thompsons. New employees often take a while to warm up
in our industry, but he was make coffees, chasing down leads and offering his
opinion on everything within the first week.
He joined us in the Mariner after work that first Friday, our usual
haunt after a hard week.
“Budge up Kev,” he said, forcing a chair between me and
Ceri. I’d been working my way up to ask
her out for a few weeks and this was the closest I’d been, so I wasn’t best pleased. I moved and he slid into the circle, angling
his chair facing towards Ceri and his back to me.
After the weekend, I found he had moved desks to the one
facing mine. “Much better view, Kev” he
said, winking at me and nodding his head towards Ceri who sat to my left. She was on a call, but I saw her cheeks
flush, but whether with delight or embarrassment I wasn’t sure. “And I’m overlooking the river too.”
And it all went downhill from there.
Tuesday, I discovered my stapler had been hidden in the
bottom of the bin. I spent 15 minutes
looking for it before asking to use Ceri’s, and only discovered it when I
kicked my bin in frustration. Jim made
that noise of trying-not-to-laugh-and-sounding-like-a-snort as I fished it out
and returned it to my desk.
Wednesday, I found my files had been rearranged from
alphabetical-according-to-the-alphabet to alphabetical-according-to-the-middle-letter
of the road the head office was on.
Thursday, the lids of my markers pens were all swapped
about. It might not sound like much, but
the whole system for automatic reordering in the South-West region is based on
using the right shade and thickness of pen for the right product and frequency
of reorder. Friday’s regular order of 3
boxes for Samson’s came perilously close to being rolled over into fortnightly.
I knew that on Friday Jim had a meeting on-site first thing,
so I came in early and taped the phone receiver to its base, winding 15 layers
of tape round for safety. Then Jim came in
with Gareth from Area, who wanted to make a call to confirm sales targets. Jim handed him his mobile and said “Use this
whilst I just free this up,” then proceeded to unwind my tape, muttering about
saving it for fingerprinting.
I arrived at the pub to see Jim already cosying up to Ceri, touching
her knee as he told her jokes to which she laughed politely. I left without ordering, feeling a head
coming on.
Monday was quiet but Tuesday was stapler day again. This week I arrived to find it set into a raspberry
jelly. Apparently the idea came from a
tv show, although that time it was a lime jelly. I’m not sure the colour is the point
really. Any jelly will surely hasten
breakdown of the often temperamental joints of a stapler?
That evening I locked my drawers and took all my marker pens
home, just to be safe.
When I arrived this morning, nobody greeted me with their
normal “Hello Kev.” I stopped saying
good morning myself after the fourth person seemed to urgently remember
something they had to find in their drawers.
I arrived at our desks and saw most of Jim’s possessions covered in
sticky tape, joined together or stuck to the desk itself. Even his chair was covered, long strips
wrapped from arm rest to arm rest so the seat was unusable.
I could see Jim in the boss’s office, the pair of them
talking, conspiratorial, looking over at me then back to each other and back to
me. Ceri refused to meet my eye but
looked really cross. Jim headed for me
and she hurried towards him, placing a concerned hand on his arm.
“Mr Thompson said would you go in his office for a word,
Kevin.” He wasn’t so matey now, using my
Sunday name. Then I saw the picture
window overlooking the view of the river he’d liked so much.
So in just over 2 weeks, like I said, staplers to dangling
him out of the window. And I’m starting
to lose my grip.
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