Down the Rabbit Hole

Nov 1st - Labyrinth

30 Day Blogging Challenge - Nov 1st

He stands in my doorway, the glare of perpetual disappointment etched across his narrow face. I feel the smile. I pull it methodically from my repertoire of canned responses and hope the artificial grin masks my growing rage. I surprise myself with how breezily I manage to answer the question he has asked me a dozen times already today. I ignore his unimpressed reaction, and marvel at how openly he doubts my abilities.

Twenty years I have been locked in this labyrinth. It has been almost two decades that I have wandered the landscape of the business, teaching myself about the nuances and developing the unique skill set the work requires. I know the job inside and out. And while, no one is perfect, my mistakes have been few and far between in my long tenure here. My co-worker has no appreciation for that fact, nor of what my years of experience have taught me. He still harbors the belief that I need to be mini-managed and that the degrading way in which he second guesses my decisions, is not meant to be insulting and serves only to assure we avoid any "hiccups".

"Hiccups" ...he uses the word again now, and I feel myself rankle. I drop my eyes and survey my desk. I indulge a delightful fantasy in which I suddenly chuck something at his head. My eyes find my son's toy truck, a brick red fire engine he insisted I take to work with me that first day of kindergarten. I think it looks heavy, that it might do the trick. My fingers creep toward it before I reclaim my senses. No, no. Don't go there. He's not worth the jail time.

Instead I turn up the wattage on my Cheshire cat grin and give him the answer he's waiting for. The same one I've given him thirteen times before since 6am. He saunters off and I settle for an aggressive eye roll. I open my most disturbing playlist and crank Saliva up enough to just drown out the classical jazz streaming from his office. I fish in my desk and find the chocolate chip cookie I saved from lunch. I plan to eat it savagely, while I indulge another fantasy about stabbing him in the eye with a paperclip.


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