Oh My God

Oh My God – Snailhouse (listen in new tab)

Tuesday morning. This is how G.T. loses his job.

G.T. sits in Val Percy’s office and wonders how he got there. Of course, he knows how he got there, in a literal sense, like when people know how it rains. It’s a more Sibylline how, something closer to a why.

Val’s office is thick with well chosen austerity, as if a Victorian banker’s room had been transplanted and refinished with fearful memories of G.T. grade school principals. Authoritarian, with restrained flair.

She takes off her reading glasses, sets them on her desk beside the papers she was reading. Her hazel eyes, sharp and imminent, study G.T.’s face. It makes him self-conscious; he touches the side of his face, feels the tender skin around his eye.

“You had quite the weekend.” She’s direct. G.T. is relieved. His first three meetings had been painfully inflated by the thin altiloquence of executive pretence and privilege.

G.T. smiles. “I can’t deny it.”

He started at Percy, Bors, and Galahad Marketing in their call centre on the third floor. Since January, he moved from the cubicle farm to a shared office, through a few long weeks on the international sales circuit. Despite his inner recalcitrance, he found himself on the fast track, swept up by the quick money and two-handed handshakes.

But, it was his Friday night heroics that really made his name.

Monday morning, he was called from one executive to another. All of them, eyeing his shiner, told him he had balls. All of them qualified that statement with loose criticism that distanced them from G.T. Val was his fourth meeting. There wasn’t really anyone higher up the ladder left to push him out the door.

G.T. sits back in the high-backed leather chair Val had pointed to distractedly when he walked in. The chair yields in bizarre ways, causing him to squirm noticeably to keep his back from curving unnaturally.

Val watches him, her face composed with a vague look of displeasure and benign resolve. It causes G.T. to suddenly question how much he’s mattered to this company.

Val: “How’s your eye?” Something about her concern feels propped up, as if her interest in his well-being is provisional and will soon be taken down, carried away by men in grey overalls and put out back. The question feels non-recylable. G.T. knows now for sure that the fix is in. He feels oddly calm about what is about to happen.

G.T.: “Fine. Sore, I guess. That put a steak on it thing didn’t help much.”

Her expression remains set. “Well… [a long pause, during which she rubs the bridge of her nose] So, you attacked an executive at one of our largest clients.”

G.T.: “I like to get hands on with the clients.”

Val coughs a laugh. “Gregory, don’t make jokes. They called Monday morning. They called Bors in Tokyo, too. I have no idea what time it was there. Anyways, this guy at Agravaine, Gla- Glosh-”

G.T.: “Gloucester.”

Val: “Yeah. He’s got pull with half the board, Bors especially. I’ve never met him, but he does have one of those names, though.”

G.T.: “Like a Shakespearean villain?” He finds himself getting increasingly glib.

Val ignores his little flippancy. “Ok. We have to bend on this one. Agravaine is too big to us to have them complaining about your drunken shenanigans.”

G.T. points at his black-eye. “To my defence, it was their goons that gave me this.”

Val: “It doesn’t matter. We have to let you go.”

G.T.: “I figured.”

Val: “But, we won’t hang you out to dry. You’ll be taken care. A good severance and all that.” She reaches into a drawer and pulls out two envelopes. She holds them out so as to force G.T. to leave his sit to collect them. He sits back down. “One’s your dismissal. The other, it has a list of people you should call when your severance runs out.”

G.T. looks her straight in the eye, taps the envelopes lightly against his temple. “Thanks.”

Val: “You never liked it here, anyways.” It is a statement laden with sad affinity.

Security is waiting for him in his office. The two men watch silently with crossed arms as G.T. packs things into a box someone had left on his desk. His office mates had left post-its on their monitors that read “Back in 15”, or more likely whenever G.T.’s done and gone.

G.T. didn’t really need the box. Everything he wanted to keep fit into his satchel; the rest is tossed into the waste bins. He looks around the room as he slings his bag over his shoulder. The guards follow him to the elevator and ride down with him.

G.T.: “You guys do this a lot?”

Guard #1: “Sometimes.”

G.T.: “Was I fast?”

Guard #2: “Like in comparison? You’re ok. The last guy took forever. He cried.”

G.T.: “Really?” He can’t imagine shedding a tear over this place.

Guard #1: “Yeah. An older guy. I think he stole or something?”

G.T.: “Oh, yeah. That must have been Sammy. Who’d have thunk he’d cry.”

The elevator chimes the first floor. The doors slide open. G.T. is followed into the foyer, where he’s watched as he hands in his security.

Once he’s outside, the guards head back in. “Thanks, guys.” They ignore him, leaving him on the far off planet of Doesn’t Work Here Anymore.

Out in the sunny mid-morning. He is in a valley banked by blue and green glass. He reaches into his bag and pulls out the envelope Val gave him, the one with the numbers. He turns it in his hands thoughtfully as he walks. Before taking the stairs down to the subway, he lets the envelope drop indifferently into a waste bin.