Uprising

I was sitting at my desk when I saw a computer monitor flying through the air out of the corner of my eye. It fell to the ground with an unsatisfying thump. I truly believe that had it been a more spectacular smash, Gary might have stopped and prevented what turned out to be the biggest and most audacious office rampage anyone has ever seen.

No, I’m not talking about a rampage that involves someone walking around the office shooting fellow employees like some disgruntled postal worker. It was an attack on our oppressors, the faceless heads of the massive corporation we work for. People making a stand and saying “We are not robots; we will not stand for the crap you dish out to us anymore”.

At least, that’s my take on it. I mean initially, I was unable to understand what motivated him to act in this way, but as it escalated it was clear Gary had something important to say.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked towards the monitor that had just thumped to the floor. They then looked at Gary, who stood in the middle of the room staring at his efforts. And then they looked at the monitor again. I suppose if you were looking at us all you might have thought we were watching some sort of indoor office tennis match.

After around a minute of awkward silence, everyone seemed to snap out of their surprised state and return to what they were doing, except Gary who continued to stand stock still, staring at the computer monitor. Fellow employees ignored him, like a defective robot that management would soon come and dispose of. Even I, being relatively new to the company felt my curiosity wane. But then suddenly and quite quickly, Gary was on the move again.

Gary stormed over to the computer monitor and picked it up. He was a portly man, around fifty years of age and he seemed to struggle with the large CRT monitor, but what he lacked in physical prowess was easily made up in his determination. He was a man on a mission. He started at a walking pace towards the floor managers office, gaining momentum as he got closer. One meter before reaching the office he launched the monitor at the tinted glass wall separating us from them. It smashed through the glass and disappeared through to the other side. A large hole remained, the tinting the only thing holding the left over glass in the panel together.

Yet Gary still wasn’t satisfied. He searched around and found the first thing he could get his hands on; the bottle from the water cooler. Water poured everywhere as he ripped it from the dispenser. Walking over to Mrs. Carlyle’s desk, the unfortunate worker whose cubicle lay closest to the cooler, he upended the bottle and poured water over all her work, her keyboard, and into the back of the monitor which immediately started to smoke. Once the bottle was empty, he tossed it to the ground and looked around for something else to destroy.

All twenty-seven of us did nothing as we watched the display in a state of shock and awe. Maybe not the Shock and Awe that Bush was talking about, but for a Tuesday afternoon this was pretty unique. At this point I remembered wondering where the floor manager was. Through the hole into his office I could see he wasn’t in there. I wondered if it was our responsibility to take down this rogue minion.

Gary had picked up a baseball bat from someone’s cubicle and he was going to town on various items around the office. Telephones, fax machines, the photo copier, anything that was owned by the corporation was a target. Employees jumped out of his way as he walked by them. He was a force of nature, nothing was slowing the fat man down. His face had gone red, what little was left of his hair was disheveled, and sweat marks grew before our eyes from beneath his pits.

After destroying his third office notice board, Gary finally paused in his rampage and stood still, taking long deep breathes. His eyes took on a different focus and for the first time since this all started, he seemed to notice the other employees standing around the office watching him with mouths agape.

Gary looked into our eyes one by one. He seemed to be searching for something. When it was my turn, I like everyone else tore away from his stare quickly to look at the floor, not wanting to offer him any support. When I looked back I saw that he had locked gaze with the oldest and longest serving employee in our department, Mrs. Walker. Unlike me, she hadn’t looked away from him. I tried to read the look on her face but failed. I had no idea what silent communication passed between the two in that gaze. Abruptly, Mrs Walker turned away and started walking towards the kitchen.

“You know.” She began, looking back over her shoulder at Gary. “I’ve asked them to replace the toaster in the kitchen for over five years. It can’t cook toast. It either doesn’t brown the toast or it burns the shit out of it. I've put through at least ten emails with no response”.

Mrs. Walker reached the toaster and casually unplugged it from the wall. Picking it up she walked back from the kitchen and with mischievous grin she called out

“Batter up!”

Gary smiled, and went into a Babe Ruth pose. Mrs. Walker did her best underarm throw, not bad for a sixty five year old woman, and the toaster flew through the air, cord trailing behind as it sailed in for a decent strike. Gary's hit was true and with a satisfying clunk, he sent that toaster back through the air to deliver another hole in the floor managers glass wall.

Another employee David called out from his cubicle “The “S” on my keyboard has been sticking for the last two months. When I asked for a new one they'd said they would “get on it”, but so far nothing!” He smashed the keyboard against the top of his cubicle wall as he finished causing keys to fly out in all directions.

At that point a strange aura seemed to fill the room as people looked at these two “model employees” throwing their support behind the insane actions Gary had taken out just minutes before. Even I, who had little grievance with the company, started to smile. The feeling in the air was infectious. Dangerous, but extremely infectious.

And then things started to really get out of control.

It was like something out of a movie. An old western where one person throws a punch and all of a sudden everyone stands up and starts swinging. The only difference here is that we weren't directing our anger at each other, we were working together to destroy the office space that for a lot of us had become a minimum security prison. One minute David had smashed his keyboard and the next people were looking for something to take their frustration out on. Monitors, coffee mugs and memos were being destroyed by any means available and the satisfaction on the faces of the employees carrying out the destruction was priceless.

I was hesitant. I was twenty-two for god sakes, just out of college and in a plump role I thought I had no right to have. Was I throwing it all away to join in with the madness that was unraveling? I walked around the office, no-one was begrudging me for not joining in. One of the accountants was in the floor managers office taking a leak on his desk. Three other employees were going to town on the remaining appliances in the kitchen. These people who had given a good chunk of their lives to this company were taking something back and how!

I walked over to Mrs. Walkers desk. It was a museum of service rendered to the company. A memo from '92 warning staff on the dangers of sexual harassment, one from '87 saying they were no longer aloud to smoke at their desks. There were photo's of her children, from day dot until marriage. She'd been at the same desk that long? Was that what was to become of me? Would my life achievements be able to be summed up by a quick perusal of a gray walled cubicle, scraps of paper and a shit load of thumb tacks? It send a shiver down my spine.

The office kettle sailed over my head and hit the fan, careening off in another direction. Gary was all red faced again, finishing off the remaining glass panels of the floor managers wall with the same baseball bat. The office looked as if someone had set off a bomb.

I left that day not destroying anything, but I did not return. I got a letter in the mail saying someone had acknowledged I hadn't taken part in the rampage and I was still considered a valued member of the Waffle Worldwide team, but I couldn't go back. That was the first and last office job I ever had.