It's Friday, just coming around 4:00 PM. Sitting on my office chair, I swivel around to the windows on the right. Hoping to catch a gaze of what the weather is like. "Cloudy, eh?" I thought, "Not the best, not the worst. I need to make sure that I don't forget my blazer today".
Turning back to face my computer, I look around and see rows of desks with empty chairs. A majority are absolute in their dark screens, whereas others are playing various screen-savers attempting to break through the monotony of technological purgatory. From the window facing me straight ahead from the far side of the room, I get a sense of the vastness of the building. I'm sitting here on this branch's 2nd floor, the top floor. We're the smallest of all the branches in Canada, and our current CEO has a special place in his heart for this office. This was the Oil to Oil branch that opened he first opened about 40 years ago. He's a kind man who doesn't speak much. He does his best to keep his employees happy, but aside from that, nobody knows much about him. This office is lined with mementos from the past. Almost all the main photographs are of previous employees with beaming smiles that just make you feel happy from within.
I finally got a quick break and was about to return to work. I was trying to catch my breath and get in a quick stretch, but work wouldn't leave me alone. Emails flooded in, and then it stopped. When I was ready to leave my desk, the notifications for the emails started going off so much. It felt like it was over before it started. But I am so close to finishing the day's work and finally heading home to sleep. Oh... how I long for a few moments of peace and quiet without the stress of the week building till the penultimate climax on Friday. Speaking of which, the past few weeks have been odd, and many of the other employees haven't been showing up. I haven't heard of anyone being sick either, so who knows, maybe they got fired or quit (for what reason, though?). But it's been OK for the most part, though the amount of work is harrowing.
I get emails every minute about a new assignment or some news, and half of them aren't even sent directly to me. They aren't even remotely related to me and what I do. Speaking of what I do... I work on customer relations. Specifically with some of our smaller customers, to give them a better experience. We don't have a lot of people on our team, so that's why it gets a bit much when you have to do your own work as well as the work from other departments. As for the emails, they're forwarded to me by some other department. "It's your work, so why don't you... you know, do your fucking work", is something that I always thought of when I received these emails in bulk. "I haven't even finished the assignment from the last email. How the fuck am I going to work on this one." Anyway, that's enough of that for now.
Since I've got some time to kill, and I don't care to really work, as WORK IS (about as) DONE (as it can be), and I don't want to have a staring match with my computer, I thought that I'd write in this new journal that Jot gave me. It's a simple black hardcover notebook with lined paper, but the cover is nice and quite sturdy. The paper is fantastic to write on, it feels like I'm gliding from one line to the next. It's also got this nice strap and a place to put a pen or pencil. I've thrown a simple blue ballpoint pen and a mechanical pencil that I found in my cupboard inside the holder. I'm not even going to lie; this is a cool gift. I'm not sure how much I will use it, but I will try to make the most of it.
Anyway, I just heard something weird going on with the company. Something about the oil site digging up something other than... oil. First of all, how did someone get that vast amount of knowledge? Literally, you have one job, and you give the most generic statement. Rant aside, many on-site people are sick and stuck at the hospital. Nobody's said anything about that or their conditions, but I just heard about that from Jot when he gave me this journal just before I took my break today. It's bizarre because the executives always let us know whenever anything odd, irregular or negative happened. Still I'm not sure what it could be. They're holding us in the dark so it's absolutely nothing or something worse than we can possibly think. I think that I'm leaning more towards something fucked up being covered up. But what could it even be?
YOU ARE READING
Freedom At Last
Short StoryMain character discovers that something odd is going on at company that he works out and decides to search for the answer. While in the search, he loses focus and decides to go on a rampage to bring himself and his co-workers some closure.
