Missing Things

hiraeth

Carl ran into Alison on his way to get an adaptor.

"Did you see what they did to the kitchen?" she said, panic in her voice. "I swear they don't want us to talk to each other anymore."

"What did they do?" Carl asked, worried.

"Come," Alison said, leading him towards the kitchen. "I know they said that they were going to reconfigure the kitchen, but they didn't say they were going to do this!"

They got to the kitchen and found that it had been changed completely. The seating area had been blocked off and all that was left was a windowless galley.

"I can't believe they did this," Alison said, sounding like she might cry.

They turned around and made their way to Sam's desk to get their adaptors for the day. When they got there they found that the adaptor box was sitting on a table next to a bar code scanner. There was a sign above it that read, "To check out an adaptor, scan your ID card, then the bar code on the adaptor. To return an adaptor, scan the bar code on the adaptor and put it back in the box."

"What's this?" Carl asked Sam.

"It's the new adaptor check-out system," Sam said. "It was announced in the email."

"I don't remember seeing that," Alison said.

"It was there," Sam said.

"Was it the part about adaptors being made available on a going forward basis?" Alison asked.

"Not quite those words, but yes," Sam said.

Alison took an adaptor out of the box. "What happened to all the stickers? Where's my favourite one with the purple flower?"

"Are these all new adaptors?" Carl asked, looking at the adaptors in the box. There were small bar codes stuck on all of them.

"No, they're all the same adaptors that were there before, but I took all the stickers off them and put bar codes on. Now I'll be able to track who has which adaptor and hopefully they won't go missing as often."

"Maybe the ones that were going missing were being claimed!" Alison exclaimed.

"I'm pretty sure they just weren't bringing them back." Sam pointed to the bar code reader. "Anyways, scan your IDs and the barcodes, and you can be on your way. But remember to scan them back in when you return them at the end of the day. You'll be charged for any adaptor you don't return within a week."

"The company is going to charge us for not returning adaptors that belong to us?" Carl said, almost yelling. "This was the lost and found! These adaptors belong to people in the office! They can't just appropriate them! They can't make us pay for adaptors that were never theirs to begin with! They have no right to do this!"

Sam shrugged. "You can send a complaint to the Infrastructure Services Team email. But if you want an adaptor, these are the rules now."

Carl sighed and scanned his ID and his adaptor.

***

Carl's meeting was moved to early afternoon. At lunch he went to Sandwich Select and had the spicy tuna, which was back. He noticed that the woman who always served him had a name tag that said "Effie". He felt bad for never noticing before.

He left her a larger than usual tip, and then sat under one of the beach paintings and ate his sandwich while Sloan's If It Feels Good Do It played in the background.

While he ate he thought about how it wasn't fair that the company expected everyone to show up for work and pretend they were fine regardless what was going on in their lives. It didn't matter if they had broken up with someone or if someone had died, they were expect to work as if none of that had happened. And they were supposed to do this while the company kept taking things away from them.

The company took away their desks.

The company took away their privacy.

The company took away their kitchen.

And the company took away their adaptors!

Carl got a coffee to go after he was done eating, and rushed to his meeting.

It went on longer than usual, because Sean went on for fifteen minutes telling everyone how excited he was for the new meeting room with windows. A few of his teammates agreed that losing the kitchen was a small price to pay for a meeting room with windows. After all, it wasn't like there was a water cooler or coffee machine to talk around anymore.

After the meeting, Carl went back to his desk but couldn't bring himself to work. He stared at the adaptor on his desk. Its barcode was printed on a plastic sticker that could easily be removed.

He looked at the time. It was almost three o'clock. He knew Sam always took a break at three.

Carl went to the bathroom, grabbed a sheet of toilet paper, and went back to his desk. He unplugged the adaptor from the power bar, peeled off the sticker, and stuck it to the toilet paper.

He took the toilet paper to the barcode scanner, made sure there was no one around, and scanned the barcode. Then he went to the first gender-neutral bathroom and flushed the toilet paper.

***

Back at his desk, Carl opened the drawer. No one ever checked the drawers.

He was about to throw the adaptor into it when he noticed the block of post-it notes.

"I hope you found me," the topmost note read.

Carl removed it.

"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to answer you before they took away the notepad," the next note read.

"They took away the notepad?" Carl said to himself. He was about to get up and go check the gender-neutrals, but there were more post-it note messages.

"It doesn't matter anyways because this is my last day," the message said. "I took another job. It's too bad we never got to meet, but maybe it's for the best, that way we have fond memories of each other even if maybe we never got along in person. Take care. I hope you find your adaptor."

Carl stared at the notes. He was filled with a sense of loss and rage.

He couldn't decide if he was more angry or more sad, but if he had to describe it to someone, it was a deep, agonizing ache that he felt. A deep agonizing ache at the idea that the person on the other side of the notepad was gone forever. A deep agonizing ache that everything — the kitchen, his desk, his adaptor, his friends, his previous life, his past four years — were all gone and would never be coming back.

He picked up the notes, folded them neatly, put them in his pocket, threw the adaptor in the drawer, and left.