The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 11: The Clowns
Part Two (This time it's personal)
Previous Chapter: Chapter Eleven (Part One)
But before I could beat Humphrey I had to clean the bathrooms. I became quite good at it. I’ve never been what one might call an especially tidy person. I’m not a slob, at least I don’t think so. I like to wear nice clothes and I like to live in clean apartments, it’s just I’ve never had quite enough money for the nicest clothes and although I wanted to live in a spotless shiny apartment I didn’t exactly want to do the cleaning myself.
What’s that you say? No one likes cleaning. I disagree. I think there are definitely some people who may not enjoy it in the way one enjoys a Mozart concerto or watching the Vikings play on Sunday but who absolutely need it like a prescription drug. Cleaning is the greatest busybody activity in human history. And if by some miracle a Japanese robotics company (or a subsidiary of Landmark) were to come up with a wonder product that kept houses, apartments, lives, dust-free and sparkling at all times without vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing and mopping ourselves, those high metabolism individuals who now spend an inordinate amount of their day wiping coffee mug rings from their coffee tables and polishing fridge and oven door handles and removing mildew from hidden metallic circular objects in the bathroom would end up climbing the walls like your average heroin addict who had been cut off by their dealer, or perhaps, more likely, they would end up exercising themselves to death.
You see, there are people like me who enjoy sitting on the couch and resting and watching television or ruminating on the mysteries of lost civilizations like the Sea Peoples in their spare time. And then there are those people who see that type of leisure as torture, who can’t stand sitting still for more than a couple of minutes, that need to keep moving like a dolphin coming up for air every few minutes, the ones who see rumination on lost cultures as not only pointless and an incredible waste of time and energy but also an indicator of a lack of moral fiber.
And this is where we come to the crux of the matter, because for far too long in human history those who, like me, enjoy a good nap in the middle of the day, who can occupy themselves by spacing out in the middle of long work hours, have been seen as the lazy and shiftless sort one wouldn’t want marrying their daughters or sons. We’re called things like otiose (I saw this word used once in an article in Premiere magazine, not exactly a place where one expects to encounter words they had never heard before, and wanted to use it ever since. Of course, no one actually calls us such things because no one besides a professional writer would ever use such a word. It’s a word meaning lazy or indolent. I think it might also have another meaning I can’t remember right now.); lazy or indolent.
But we’re not lazy at all. We’re sensible. Really, it’s only a matter of genetics, where for us (the sensible ones) it takes work to get up from the couch, from the bed, from the futon, for the other (less sensible) type of person, the ones who never sit still, it takes work to relax and calm their ever-moving bodies, most likely, because they some type of gland issue. And if there’s any moral superiority to be had, it’s with my kind of people and not the busybodies, I mean, which of these two types do you think has caused the most misery to other humans on both a small (petty tyrant) and large (actual political/military tyrant) scale throughout history.
This is why I took such pride in my cleaning of the bathroom. Humphrey had given me a task that wasn’t suited to my natural abilities, but I overcame my limitations and turned those bathrooms into pleasure palaces worthy of Zeus’ throne (no pun intended). Sure, it wasn’t exactly fun to unplug a stall after Henry had been in there for his lunch hour or to wipe up the pools of piss that inevitably and habitually form underneath the urinals; but 5 times a day this I did and did successfully, taking a break from my stacks of old, unneeded files and putting out one of those yellow triangular “man working” signs on the ground outside the bathroom door and then indeed going to work with scrubbers and chemicals and foams and plungers, not thinking of my own hygiene so others could defecate and urinate on a higher hygienic plane. I not only felt pride in this work but could see the tangible results (at least until Henry returned for his afternoon break). Humphrey thought he was demeaning me when really he was only showing me I had powers I’d never known I had. But he must have been watching me on his cameras and saw I didn’t look depressed and defeated, and realized he needed to come back into my life and try to squash me again.
Richard approached my desk on Friday, I had made it to the H’s and was on schedule to complete the alphabetizing by the deadline. He leaned on the stack of in progress M’s and looked down at me.
“Don’t worry. I cleaned the bathrooms a half an hour ago.”
He wasn’t there about the bathrooms.
“I have some good news and bad news.”
“Okay.” I stood up to take the news like a man.
“The good news is you get to deliver the mail again, although you still have to clean the bathrooms and finish the filing.”
“I can do that, that’s not too bad.”
“That’s not the bad news.”
Richard gathered all of the mailroom employees together for an announcement. Everyone formed a semi-circle around Richard, he told them to take their earphones out and listen. He produced an interoffice memo and then peered down with a new set of reading glasses he had purchased earlier that week after a disappointing trip to the optometrist. Some of the mailroom employees were standing, others were sitting on stools, turned over empty boxes, whatever was handy, as they watched in stunned silence because there had never been a meeting of the entire mailroom staff before.
I was still at my desk, still standing like a man. From this vantage point, I only could see concern, agitation, anxiety, there was no excitement for the first ever staff meeting in the history of the Landmark mailroom. I heard one employee in front of me whisper to another that the mail was going to be automated and the meeting had been called because we were all going to be laid off. If only.
“I have been ordered to make a few changes to mailroom policy in order to improve efficiency. The first change,” Richard put up his reading glasses resting them on the top of his head, choosing to squint down at the interoffice memorandum instead of peering through the new glasses he couldn’t stand wearing. “Is that there will be no more breaks, not even lunch breaks. You will work for 8 and a half hours straight.”
“Is that even legal?” A dispirited voice from the semi-circle asked. No one answered as Richard kept squinting and reading.
“Second, all mailroom employees will now have to wear uniforms.” There was general confusion as Richard turned to a brown cardboard box on the table behind him that had been heretofore ignored as just another piece of anonymous mail amongst the many packages of the mailroom. Richard opened the top of the box, briefly struggling with the tangled fabric inside before pulling out a bright multi-colored one-piece uniform.
“Come on. That looks like a clown costume.” Another dispirited voice from the semi-circle shouted. Richard then held up a pair of giant fire engine red shoes. Yes, it was a clown costume.
Richard wasn’t done. He squinted at the memo again. “These uniforms must be worn at all times by mailroom employees while they are on Landmark property. This includes the sidewalks and courtyard and the parking garage. If a mailroom employee is seen in non-uniformed clothing while on Landmark property, they will be terminated immediately.”
“Management also wants to mention that these new policies come from specific suggestions from one of your coworkers, Benjamin Abbott, and would like to thank him for helping us improve the efficiency here at Landmark.”
I thought I could see Richard mouth the word, “sorry,” as every face in the semi-circle turned to me, their eyes engaged in Mike-level cursing that also promised a possible future of physical harm.
I tried to convince them it could have been worse, that the mailroom could have been automated and all of us laid off, but I wasn’t able to gain any traction with my argument. The semi-circle didn’t want to listen to me.
For the rest of the day, packs of menacing clowns would walk by me saying vengeful words, a few bumping into me, as I tried to sort the mail and then tried to navigate my mailcart through the obstacles they put in my path as I went out on a mail run. They no longer used the urinals to piss in, just urinating on the floor, even the women didn’t use the stalls and Henry now somehow missed the toilet during his daily lunchtime deposit. It wasn’t pretty.
Only when I was out on a mail run was I safe from harassment. Sure, my shoes squeaked as I walked and I was dressed in a half-red half-blue clownsuit with white polk-a-dots (and red carnation and white frills), so I guess I wasn’t completely safe since nearly every employee would snigger and laugh as I walked by, some making sad clown faces (a few pretending to mime, which wasn’t appropriate at all), so I suppose this could be considered a type of harassment, but it was nothing compared to what happened in the mailroom. And after work.
I didn’t expect the clowns when they jumped me in the parking garage. I figured work was work, I knew they were upset about the changes (it was always difficult to tell if they were more upset about the no-break policy or the humiliation of the clownsuit), but once the day was over I thought we’d all move on to our own lives like we usually did and petty grudges wouldn’t be held (at least until the next morning).
Unfortunately, petty grudges were held (and acted upon). I was parked on the fourth floor of the parking garage and as I walked to my car from the elevator, I felt that the garage was quieter than usual, it was too quiet. I saw shadows and footsteps when I reached for my driver’s side door handle, but I was too late, I didn’t have a chance and was taken to the ground by a passel of clowns.
Two clowns stood watch to make sure no good Samaritans intervened as a circle of clowns (led by that asshole Paul and his friend Steve) kicked and punched me, their shoes squeaking with every blow. I curled up into a ball trying to protect myself. Luckily, the extra-long clown shoes provided cushioning so even forceful kicks didn’t cause as much pain as they should have. Still, I was bruised all over and bleeding from the mouth when I heard the shouts of a woman. At first, I thought one of the female clowns was getting a little overexcited by the pummeling, but the shouting continued, louder and more forcefully, it was the roar of a lioness protecting one of her cubs. Frightened, the clowns scattered to the far reaches of the parking garage.
It was Debi. She helped me sit up against the back wheel of my car, brushing aside some broken glass. Oh yeah, they had smashed in my car windows as well. I was holding my ribs and tried to smile. Debi looked worried. She took some tissue from her purse and started dabbing at the cut above my right eye. I tried smiling again, having no more success than my first attempt. She still looked worried. Debi stopped dabbing and looked me straight in the eye. “You need to quit, Ben. You have no choice. You need to quit.”
I didn’t make a third attempt at a smile, instead I looked at her with the look of a stone-cold killer. Didn’t she know that telling me to quit was the surest way to get me not to quit. I haven’t done anything anybody’s told me to do since the third grade. I wasn’t going to listen to the stomps of those asshole clowns and I wasn’t going to listen to nice caring Debi. The more she insisted as I sat there holding my ribs while she cleaned me up, the more determined I became not to listen to her, or to listen to anybody, I wasn’t going to quit that fucking job, Humphrey was going to have to fire me.
I drove home in my windowless car. Debi had a dinner appointment with Clark, so I was on my own for the night. I knocked on Angel’s door but she was out, probably working. I had all weekend to think and tend to my wounds, wondering what new horrors Humphrey and the clowns would have for me on Monday. Maybe the new uniforms and the cutting of breaks was Humphrey’s last move. Maybe he didn’t have any more ideas and he would let the scenario play out now. Of course, I would still have to deal with the angry clowns. Perhaps, the weekend would lessen their anger, of course, even if their anger subsided over the two days, on Monday morning when they put on their colorful “uniforms” and then had to work through their regular morning break and then their lunchtime, the anger would come back.
No, the clowns were going to stay mad at me, I was sure of that. And the more I thought about it, I was sure Humphrey would have another move as well. He could always just fire me. I could show up on Monday morning and Richard could tell me to go home, that I was fired, and it would all be over with. But both Humphrey and I knew what was happening. If he fired me, I won. If I quit, he won. The game was very clear. The rules of the game, they were a little murky, but how to keep score, Humphrey and I knew how to do that. I had survived the clowns and the no break policy. I had thrived in cleaning the bathroom and in alphabetizing. I was going to show up on Monday. And once I showed up on Monday I would be winning and Humphrey would know it.