Julia's Outburst : Part 1 : Opposites (ch.9)

People were scurrying to work – rush hour on the network and walkways of the city. Everyone appeared so keen to work, as if it were providing them with worthwhile satisfaction.

She wondered at the phenomenon, remembering early school days when everyone was themselves, natural, without such concern for the outward appearance they gave, and wanted to avoid hard work as much as possible. Of course that hadn’t been possible.

What had turned those independent classmates into the worker ants she could see around her today? At work everyone was keen to please, polite and dutiful to bosses and managers. People fought for computer screens, eulogising on the pleasures of the common computer software in widespread use.

An extra demand from the manager, ‘This has got to be done by seven so it can be out by Net mail for start of business tomorrow morning.’ There was a clamouring in the office as people jumped to the challenge. ‘I don’t like it when I’ve got nothing to do,’ said one keen trainee lady only a couple of years out of her preliminary courses and ambitious to make a name for herself in the organisation before she was thirty. A few years to go yet but she was on track.

‘Nice looking girl,’ she thought. ‘What a shame.’ Inwardly she shook her head. That girl would have wasted the best years of her life just like the rest of them by the time she was thirty or forty, on the altar of career success. She would turn from a fresh sexually attractive woman into a callous unhappy bitch like so many that Julia knew.

There was no escape from it.

Business sponsored artists and advertised had attempted in recent years, and probably well before that, to make business look exciting and “sexy”. We see smart looking suits for men cut to the supposedly latest designs, which have actually been around for decades with only minor variations, thought Julia. We see colourful and fashionable ties which are pathetically supposed to allow the poor hardworked man to “express himself”. Women workers in adverts of all kinds of course always look stunning and sexually alluring too, wearing the gorgeous clothes which everyone is able to afford. Seemingly they have the time outside work to beautify themselves in this way. They arrive at work looking powerful, capable of staying on top and self assured, to return to their lives of male adoration and luxury in the evening.

As a result Julia felt too many of the young people were being duped into the idea that nothing matters but business. They put their careers first, became arrogant and self centred in their determination to reach the top and before they knew where they were they were over forty and looking down the other side, with nothing to show for it but a big credit balance, a wardrobe of clothes, a complex life of mortgages, bills, standing orders and claim forms and a big headache. At some point they realise that the status they’ve aimed for does not give them the power they had hoped for. The young newcomers do not particularly look up to them, thinking they can do better. The most intelligent ones realise this sooner and get off the fast track, or pretend to stay on it while they earn sufficient for their needs.

‘What a dull way to live,’ thought Julia as she daydreamed her time away. She was on her own for a while. The manager had gone out. She could spend the next two minutes writing a few notes to keep boredom at bay. She wanted to write but there was no time for it.

She felt no guilt at stealing time from the business house she worked for. What was the purpose of life? Surely it was not to work all the time. The situation most people were in was unjust. People should be valued more highly than this. They worked to produce, but the economy produced little that could be enjoyed these days. There was no time to enjoy the things which the economy did produce.

She was highly educated. More than many people in this modern world of the highly educated. She wanted to write some thesis that would bear the results of some great analysis of the modern world, point out its errors and discuss where it could improve life for its people and how. She was sure there must be many better ways to organise society better than this. Instead of lots of dulled impersonal people sitting at desks and playing with numbers and Vidphones, feeling bored every day, and wasting the gift of life which they had been given.

She wanted to do something, to be someone, to walk out of this office in the early afternoon after a morning’s work and do other things. Well she couldn’t do that but here she was alone for a while, she could begin to reclaim some of her lost life back. But what could she write about in such a short time? Thoughts perhaps, these thoughts she was having. But where to begin, any presentation of thought took so long.

She thought about the hopes she had had as a child, as a teenager, and in her early twenties as an optimistic young woman at the start of her career, but in the midst of her training. She liked the way she looked, always had. It had given her confidence and still did. She knew that men liked the way she looked too. Occasionally daring men had complimented her. She often found them looking at her as she looked at them. They would always turn away. She knew she looked good because she could compare herself with the women on the Vidnet. She put some effort in to looking after her hair and wearing nice clothes, not just because it was good for her career but because she wanted men to look at her in that way. Schooled on a diet which included the sloppy romances and the sexual fantasies of the Vidnet films she knew what love and sexual attraction were all about. She had even had a boyfriend for a few years.

Quickly she hid her writing notes underneath the other work on her desk. She could hear someone clomping up the stairs, it sounded like Relgol, one of the junior managers. Relgol was a charming woman, a “flier”, as some of the up and coming prospects were called. She was still quite young, around forty, but trailing a long list of achievements in examinations, study and work experience behind her. Julia had liked her very much at first because she seemed to overcome the general dullness which pervaded people when the life had been taken out of them by the long hours of work. She seemed keen and razor sharp, able to find humour and rise above the dullness. It was one thing which had doubtless attracted the managers to her in addition to the list of high examination grades.

Relgol was instantly pleasant and witty, particularly on first meeting, but, pleasantries given, she would nod down to long bouts of work. Rarely did she surface from her work but when she did she was again charming. She had the task of a junior manager however and this gave her authority.

Relgol worked harder and harder, and if her superior managers said something needed achieving for a certain time, she took them very seriously and made sure she achieved the target. Frequently that meant working very late, far later than the normal working hours which were deemed to be usual. She questioned their fairness dumping so much work upon her sometimes in her own thoughts. But they said she was a manager and managers are “self motivated”. They are the people who want to rise above the average worker who is sitting at his desk all day thinking about what he will watch when he gets home to Vidnet. Relgol wanted to really succeed. Besides, she knew that there would be rewards for all her hard work. Even now her superior managers would be watching her, monitoring her progress, judging whether she had what it takes. She knew that she did have what it takes. It kept her going when she began to think it was all too much.

Relgol learned how to use her Net computers to maximum use. She could flow from program to program, copying, carrying, linking, making them communicate. It was like a new world. She could run through piles of numbers, filtering them and checking them with her mind at great speeds accurately. She could input them fast too. Everything she did was fast. When she talked to managers or other workers she was crisp and efficient. She told them swiftly but clearly what they needed to know, without distracting them from the task at hand. If they did not understand straight away she became immediately patient, helping in the swiftest and kindest way to make them understand. She didn’t like those managers who browbeat and bullied their staff, although she knew it was sometimes a necessary part of management. She believed that the helpful and informative approach was far more efficient in the long run. She had studied the subject of management psychology in some depth in her studies and she believed she knew what made people tick, and what would get the best performance out of them. While she was at work even if it happened to be after working hours, she was wholly dedicated to the tasks at hand. Conversations with workers and managers were carried out for a purpose, either to exchange information, or, as she thought, to stimulate, encourage, or create a favourable impression.

Sometimes people took Relgol the wrong way. Once or twice people had done that. She knew they did not always wish to work hard and fulfil the needs of the organisation. Indeed she saw it as part of her own role to watch the people entrusted to her care to ensure that they were giving to the best of their potential to the House. The lazy ones would benefit from the training and encouragement she could impart. Their careers would benefit because they would become more efficient and more dedicated when she had finished with them. She was always on the lookout for workers who would stop what they were doing to chat for more than a minute or so, or who would volunteer a little too often to collect drinks for their colleagues or just stop working for a while.

She would reprimand them subtly with what she thought was a good humoured comment, or gently with an earnest piece of advice in a way that would offend no one and would help to improve their performance.

Nonetheless there were a couple of times when workers had taken her well meant advice the wrong way. Once she had explained to someone that the speed of their performance at certain work tasks was not within the average acceptable range. She had enquired how this employee might improve their methods. The employee had seemed calm and understanding but then suddenly and without warning she had turned round to face her and spat at her, ‘You’re not a human being any more. Do you know what you are? You’re a walking, talking robot.’

Relgol heard that resounding in her head for days afterwards. How could the woman have been so cruel? How could she say such a nasty thing? Why would anyone think like that? She knew that everyone wanted to be successful. Given hard work everyone had it within their potential to be a manager, and many, perhaps most, did become one of one sort or another during their lives. Surely they all understood the need for hard work, if not for the progress of the human race or the international, or the national economy, then surely for the achievement of their company house, or for their own achievement. That was what motivated most people – self achievement, a quite natural and necessary motivation.