Obsession (viii)

Part VIII
Headless Chickens: Gaskrankinstation (link retired)

The warehouse was always cool. The windows that lined the top of the high walls let in a cold light, a blue light. It dully lit the rows and rows of metal corridors created by the shelving. The corridors muffled the sound of footsteps, distorted them, refracted them around the enormous room. Lining the shelves that loomed over me as I walked along them were stacks of books. A light dust coated them, so we carried a cloth tucked into our belts to wipe the books down as we picked them from the shelves. Books on cooking, on parenting, novels, coffee table books with glossy images of endangered animals, small cheap novels typeset so tightly, on such cheap paper, that the words were sometimes difficult to decipher.

The women who worked down here in the warehouse were in their early fifties. They all had grown families and enjoyed this job as it required little stress and the hours suited their lifestyles. They didn’t need to work; the income was devoted to yearly overseas holidays and extensions on their homes. They enjoyed the camaraderie of their coworkers. They were neighbours, their children had gone to the same schools. They could more easily be imagined meeting every Tuesday at the local social tennis club.

Their goodnatured banter filled the cold, stark building. They teased the storemen who drove the forklifts. The storemen snuck out the front for sneaky cigarettes with the truck drivers between packing jobs.

I loved to come down here. I would walk through the corridors and trace my fingers along the stacks of books. I could lose myself here for a quiet time, a refuge away from the constantly ringing phone and incessant demands of my manager.

Upstairs, I worked. I loved the books coming in, fresh from the printers, knowing their history, the painstaking efforts that went into taking them from typewritten pages sent in by the author, to these final glossy texts. It was exciting.

However, my job I found a lot less satisfying. I worked in the publicity department. Well, there was me and my manager. We were the department. A career that initially had appeared glamorous quickly became repetitious and draining and unrelenting. I loved the books we were promoting, as a rule, but the constant demand for interviews, for press releases, for mail outs, for cold calls to producers, were all taking their toll on my happiness and my health. I just couldn’t imagine doing anything else though, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else wanting me. After four years without a proper holiday, I was running on empty.

And then my manager resigned. I kept the department running for two months while they found a replacement for her.

When I first met my new manager, my immediate impression was that he was unimpressive. He was shorter than me, and shook hands with that ‘dead fish’ handshake that patronising men tend to reserve for women. He took every responsibility I had away from me, so he could rebuild the department from the ground up. Or so he could repeat practices that my manager and I had already tried and dismissed as unworkable. That didn’t matter. HE hadn’t tried them, so we would do it the way he said. I couldn’t have been more unhappy. Or confused.

I had assumed initially that he was gay. He was incredibly effeminate. But I began to wonder if I was wrong. He had a tendency to stand in my personal space, so a conversation with him would result in me slowly backing across the room as I would take a step back, to gain a more comfortable distance, and he would take a step forward into my space again. He would talk with an almost false setto voice, softly, so I would have to step in to him to hear him. When I worked on the computer, he would stand behind me to read over my shoulder, and I would feel him pressing against the back of my chair, against my shoulder. I was incredibly confused by what was happening. But I must have been imagining it. And even if I wasn’t, there was noone I could tell. This was a company where the general manager blew you kisses as he walked past, and he had once given his secretary and me lace underwear in the office Secret Santa. I had cried in my office after that. It felt so humiliating. But his secretary had laughed. Obviously I was just too sensitive.

Things became increasingly difficult once I returned to work after my hospital stay. My manager and I were clashing, and rather than pressing up against my chair, he would simply snap things at me from my office door. I preferred that. At least I had my space back again. But it was obvious things were heading to a crisis.

I was called in to the general manager’s office on a Friday afternoon. With him, the Financial Director stood, looking at his feet, shifting uncomfortable. I shut the door behind me, and the general manager said that, due to the problems my manager was having with me, they were letting me go. But in recognition of the time I had been with the company, they were going to give me a generous payout, and a very good reference. I was to clear my desk that afternoon and leave. I didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone.

I was stunned, and yet deep down I knew this was the only thing that made sense. I walked out and walked into the publishing offices next door, where a friend worked. We had met when she had worked for the same company, and she understood its machinations better than anyone. I cried and cried. And then I stopped. I realised that it felt like a huge weight had lifted off me.

I was free. Or I had one less reason to keep control.