Losertown Home
Current News
Band Bios
Oh, Despair!(Crap Art)
Music
Good Eating
 

Losertown Library (free eBooks!)  
 

Losertown Stories Sample Chapter

Losertown Stories Sample Chapter

Chapter 1

"Do you go by Matt or Matthew?"

"Matthew," I said. It didn't really matter. Everybody ended up calling me Matt anyway. I tried to remember her name. Was it Osterhaus? I remembered it sounded German. I didn't talk to her much when I interviewed here a few weeks ago. She was the office manager, that much I knew. I followed her down a corridor.

"Hi Margaret," a woman conveniently said as we walked passed her. At least now I knew her first name.

"Did you have trouble finding parking, Matt?" asked Margaret.

"No, I took the subway." Already she was calling me Matt.

"Good. We have a program here that subsidizes mass transit, you know. Human Resources will tell you all about it when you meet with them to fill out your paperwork."

We turned the corner and entered a room lit with an abundance of florescent lights. Despite all the lights, the room seemed dark due to all of the black shelving on the walls. This was the facilities and space office. It was centered in the middle of the office building. There were doors on opposite sides, and people used them to cut through from one hallway to the other during my interview with Frank, my new boss.

"This is the nerve center of the whole firm!" he had blurted out. I think he had been embarrassed that people were walking right through his office in the middle of our interview, as if he wasn't there--or as if he didn't matter at all.

I looked over at the empty chair where his desk was. I guess he wasn't in yet. I didn't have a desk. My spot was a metal stool in the corner next to a counter. The counter was deep enough to hold a computer, but you had to look at it from an angle. I didn't really care--my new job as the Facilities and Space assistant meant that I would spend most of my day working the floor anyway.

Frank told me this. He definitely was the type of boss who was welded to his chair all day. I guess that's why they hired me--to do all the dirty work for him while he shuffled his papers. His desk was a mess. Piles and piles of paper. The only clear spot was covered with food stains. I guess that's where he ate his lunch.

"Before you meet with human resources," she said, "I need to talk to you about your department. We've made some changes in the organization."

Change? Already? I hate change. I just want to come to work and do the same routine everyday. I've had enough craziness in my life the past few years that all I'm looking for is something stable--and now she's already talking about change.

"Frank is no longer employed with us."

"Excuse me?" I said, looking at her blankly.

"Don't worry--we're not going to throw you out here all alone--I've set up a training schedule for you," she said, handing me a piece of paper.

"The Facilities and Space department works very closely with our IT department and Printing department. After you meet with Human Resources, I'll go over your duties with you and take you on a tour of the office. After that you'll have your welcome lunch, and in the afternoon you'll meet with Nina Merrill, one of our IT managers, and to close out the day you'll meet with Sam and Eddy in our Printing department.

"I know this is a lot to take in on your first day, but believe me, we've got a great team here and we'll make your transition here as smooth as possible. Do you have any questions?" she asked.

"What happened to Frank?"

"The situation regarding Frank had changed where we felt that it was better that he no longer be in our employment," she replied. It was the standard answer, and it was pretty clear that she didn't want to talk about it. Just then an announcement came over the hallway intercom. Margaret, you have a call on line 22. Margaret, please pick up line 22.

"Excuse me," she said, and picked up the phone. I went over and sat on my metal stool. I was having second thoughts about working here. I just wanted something stable and secure--a place where I could just come in and do my job and then go home and not think about work. I was hoping this job at Erskine, Donnelly, and Williams would be like that. I had always heard that working at a law firm was great--a lot of perks.

"Matt," she said, "I have to take this call in my office. Why don't you look over your schedule and I'll come back for you at 9:30 to take you over to human resources?"

"Sure," I said. She left and I was all alone in my new office with only a general idea as to what exactly a Facilities and Space assistant does. And then an opportunistic thought occurred to me--would they make me the Facilities and Space manager?

I looked at my schedule. 12:00 - Welcome lunch (Kathy, John, Art, Julie). I looked at the clock. It was 9:15. I felt like it was the first day of school again and I wished that the day was over.

II

The meeting with Human Resources went normally as expected--filling out W2 forms, reading about their leave policy, dress code--all the usual stuff. Which was good, because it was calming to hear that after being dropped a bombshell like finding out that the person who hired you is no longer there on the first day of work.

I also felt better after meeting with Margaret afterwards. She gave me a floor plan of the office and an employee listing so I could familiarize myself with the office. The Facilities and Space department, she explained, was responsible for handling all physical materials within the office. This included furniture, office equipment, the telephone system, and supplies, as well as the delivery, service, and repair of these materials. I would also handle contacting any necessary vendors or contractors as the need arose.

Frank told me much of this during my interview--but back then I was thinking I was going to be the person doing all the actual delivering and moving around of stuff. I guess I still am since I'm the only person here now. But now I have to coordinate all this as well. I felt like I could handle it. I suppose it's just like any other job--you feel out of place for a while until you become familiar with your duties.

After the meeting with Margaret, she gave me a tour of the office and introduced me to every one. They all smiled and said, "Welcome aboard!" Even the partners were nice, although I got the feeling they didn't care who I was. When I came back to my office, I sat down at Frank's desk--well, I guess it was my desk now--and started going through all the paper, trying to organize it into something understandable. I was surprised I didn't receive any telephone calls, and nobody ever entered my office.

Lunch was nice. We went to a pretty fancy restaurant. I wonder if all law firms do this--take out their new employees? I suppose they assign a representative group to take you out. Kathy and John were legal assistants. Julie was a secretary and Art was one of the partners here.

They asked me all the usual questions. Where I was working before, do I have a long commute--that sort of thing. I hate answering those questions because it's embarrassing to me. I'm thirty-three years old with a BA in business and all I've done since college is bounce around from dead end job to dead end job. And here I was surrounded by thirty somethings with law degrees.

What's really embarrassing was that they all thought I was much younger--around twenty six. And when they found out I was thirty-three it was like--oh, and you're doing this? It was a moment I relive with my relatives every holiday.

When we got back to the office after lunch, I still had thirty minutes to kill before I was supposed to meet with Nina Merrill from their IT department. I wasn't sure why I needed to meet with the IT department, but if they set it up, I guess there's a reason for it.

I resumed pulling out Frank's files and going through them to get a better grasp of what he did. Already I was feeling like a manager and felt like I had an actual purpose here.

A very, very short person walked into the office. I was startled at first because I thought he was a boy. I don't think he was even five feet tall. He was wearing an expensive three piece suit, and as he came closer to me, I could tell he was probably in his mid forties. There were a few people who weren't in their offices when Margaret took me around. He must have been one of them.

"You the new guy?" he said very loudly, extending his hand.

"Yes, I'm Matthew Peters," I said, shaking his tiny hand. I assumed there weren't any other new guys around. I didn't know hard I should grip his hand because it felt so small, but he was giving me a pretty firm grip, so I returned the favor.

"I'm Roger Thorsten. I'm a partner here." He announced it like I was supposed to kneel down before him. "Listen, I need the East Wing conference room set up for a meeting tomorrow for ten people at 3:00 pm. I'll also need the projector ready to go. Got it?"

"Sure!" I said. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

"Great!" he replied. He quickly spun around and exited out the other side of the office. I grabbed a pen and wrote a note to myself to ask Margaret about this, but I assume that I was responsible for setting up conference rooms for meetings. What that entailed I didn't know exactly.

The other door opened and a head peeped in.

"Are you ready for me?" a woman said, stepping inside.

I had my mouth open like a fool as I stared at her. She was an absolute knockout. She was sharply dressed in a black pinstriped pantsuit that accentuated her sleek figure. She had shoulder length dark brown hair and deep brown eyes. She stood there smiling at me as if she had known me all her life.

"Yes, you--you must be Nina," I finally muttered. I looked at her left hand. No ring.

"Do you go by Matt or Matthew?" she asked.

"Matthew--but it really doesn't matter," I said.

"Hi, how are you doing?" she said, coming towards me to shake my hand.

"Pretty good," I said.

"Are you coming back tomorrow?" she asked, laughing. I just smiled.

"Did they take you out to lunch?"

"Yes."

"Where'd you go?"

"We went to Pesces," I said.

"Oh yeah, by Dupont Circle, right? That's a great place! Pretty nice of them to do that, isn't it?"

"Yes, very!" I looked down at my desk. I was afraid if I kept staring into her eyes I wouldn't be able to stop.

"When I started here about two years ago they took me to Tuscana West," she said. "Okay, let me properly introduce myself--I'm Nina Merrill, and I'm one of the systems analysts here at Erskine, Donnelly, and Williams. We have five people in the IT department in this section including myself. The IT director for the entire firm, and who is my direct boss, is Rick Myers. You'll probably won't be dealing with him very much--you might have seen him already in the halls. He's very tall, pretty skinny--he's always got his sleeves rolled up.

"What I want to do is just go over the applications we use here and to gauge how familiar you are with computers. Is there another chair here?"

She looked around and spotted the metal stool.

"I guess this will have to do," she said, dragging the stool and setting it down next to me.

"We run a Windows 2000 network here," she explained. "Our office application, like a lot of law firms, is WordPerfect. Have you used WordPerfect before?"

"No, at my last work place we used Office on WinXP."

"Oh, where was this?" she asked.

"It was at the Transport Containers Association downtown."

"Did you like it there? Oh, I guess if you did you wouldn't be here, right?" she asked.

"No, it was alright," I said. "It was a small association and I just felt--"

"--that you needed a greater opportunity for advancement?"

"Yes." I lied. I left because I was restless, but what she said sounded better. I didn't want her to think that I didn't have any ambition, although I don't. I'm not really sure why I left. It was a decent, steady job, which was exactly what I wanted--or at least what I always had told myself what I wanted. After a couple of years there, I felt like I needed something new--but at the same time, nothing unfamiliar.

She nodded in agreement to my lie. "I think you'll find a lot of opportunity here," she said. "I started in tech support and within a year I was promoted."

"That's good to know," I said, approvingly. I started to buy into my own lie. "Say, do you know what exactly happened with Frank?"

"They didn't tell you?"

"No, Margaret just made some vague statement about how he no longer worked here."

"Well," she said, looking around as if someone might be listening in, "they were looking to get rid of him for a long time."

"Really!"

"Apparently he was slacking off in a major way and a lot of the partners were complaining to Margaret about him. They had meetings with him, training sessions--nothing seemed to work. Then finally they said they were going to hire an assistant for him to help him out--I guess that's where you come in. But--" and then she leaned closer to me as if imparting some national secret. "--I think their intention all along was to wait until they hired someone new and then fire him.

"It's really kind of sad--I don't know what happened. From what I heard he was a really good worker until the last year. I guess it got to a point where they just couldn't put up with it anymore."

I felt a strange kinship with Frank at that moment.

"Okay," said Nina, "where were we?" She began going over the computer applications, but I wasn't paying much attention. Because she was sitting on the stool, she was much higher than I was sitting in my chair, and she had to lean over to work the mouse. I snuck in furtive glances down her white blouse. She was wearing a beige, lace bra. I tried to be attentive and keep my eye on the computer screen, but every time she leaned over...

After about forty-five minutes, she had finished going over her checklist. Despite my distractions, I think I picked up most of it.

"Well, that's all I have to say," she said, getting up. "Do you have any questions? I stared at her blankly. "Well, if you do think of something later on--I know this is a lot to take in all at once--just give me a call or send me email." I watched her as she walked towards the door. As she was leaving, she turned her head, smiled, and waved back.

"See you, Matthew!" she said. I felt a vague sense of happiness.