Lunch Hour

The campus was always beautiful in the spring, and this year was no different. The gardeners had been hard at work, planting beautiful red, purple, green, and white flowers in various spots on the grounds, turning them into explosions of color and fragrance.

Mary loved this place not only for its beauty but for its atmosphere of academic superiority. Vibrant flora and lively minds filled this university, like a refuge of beauty and learning in the middle of New York City. On a beautiful afternoon like today, the campus was an excellent place to take your lunch outdoors, and Mary had decided to sit on the bench facing the chapel to eat her sandwich and do some people-watching.

Mary had been working for seven years as a receptionist in one of the university’s graduate schools. In the beginning, she loved her job, including her colleagues, the students, the faculty, and the opportunity afforded her to take classes without paying tuition. Although of retirement age, Mary had no desire to stop working. She would never stop working, she thought. She would work until she dropped from old age if she had her way.

On this day of sunshine and flowers, she wished she didn’t feel so depressed.

When she first came to this place, Mary had been attacked by a feeling of alienation. She held both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree in Music, but she had earned them at state schools, not at prestigious private universities. However, this feeling of non-belonging and inferiority dissipated quickly.  Mary took advantage of a benefit offered to university employees and applied for admission to the university’s School of Continuing Education to take classes as a part-time student in a non-degree program. She started by signing up for classes in Italian. Mary was bright, and her grades were good. Her next venture was into the excellent creative writing program, where she took classes in fiction writing, short forms, and non-fiction. She had done well, earning an average grade of A-minus.

As a woman in her late 60s, Mary was the oldest student in her classes and the oldest administrative employee in the graduate school where she worked. Unfortunately, her age, intelligence, and experience did not earn her respect. Instead, her employers had been doing their best to make her job impossible and to treat her with rudeness and belittling, and she had become miserable. She had even brought grievances against her employers with her union. Results were stacked against her, however, and she had not won any concessions from the university.

Mary finished her sandwich and decided to spend the remainder of her lunch hour taking a walk. She rose and began to walk around the back of the main administrative building across from the School of Business. The students of the School of Business were an energetic bunch, and they were having some special celebration today. The students were spilling out of the main door of their building, chanting and shouting. Some of them were dancing. Mary smiled as she stopped to watch them before continuing on her walk. Walking always made her feel a little better when she was depressed. However, even a brisk walk today couldn’t dispel the depression that weighed her down. She stopped and sat on one of the benches on the other side of the main administrative building, feeling out of breath and heavy.

Remembering the events of the previous morning, Mary began to cry softly. A young female student passed in front of her and stopped to ask if she needed help. Mary smiled through her dripping tears and said no, she was alright and just needed to sit for a few minutes. With a look of concern on her face, the student walked away.

The morning had started as usual. Mary arrived for work at 9:00, sat at her desk, and turned on her phone and computer. Her boss had already arrived and was sitting at her desk in her office. Her office door was open, as usual, putting Mary directly into her line of vision. As usual, Mary had been given nothing to do except handle the desk and answer the phone. Because it was rarely busy at her desk, Mary had to sit in enforced idleness. She was sure this was part of a plan to make her as unhappy as possible with her job. She had often asked her boss for work to keep her busy. Occasionally her boss would throw a small project her way, but she usually preferred not to do so. In addition, there was very little ventilation in her work area, and Mary often found it challenging to stay awake when sitting at her desk, forced to do nothing except wait for the phone to ring or for someone to come by her desk. Propping open the hallway door was forbidden because of fire regulations, so the ventilation problem was never solved.

Mary had started a project of her own to keep herself busy, building a spreadsheet with contact information for the faculty members. This required her to spend time on the Internet. This morning, Mary opened her spreadsheet and looked up information about one of the associate professors. Her boss had passed by her desk, seen her on the Internet, and accused her of surfing it and wasting university time. Mary had tried to explain that what she was doing was work, not pleasure, but her boss would have none of it. She yelled at Mary and forced her to put away the spreadsheet she was working on. Mary had been forced to spend most of the morning in idleness and boredom, trying hard to stay awake.

Around 11:00 AM, her boss approached her and handed her a letter. It was a warning letter, accusing her of sleeping at her desk and stating that action could be taken against her if she continued. Mary was shocked and upset and confronted her boss, saying she did not sleep at her desk and often asked for work in vain. Her boss had been adamant and refused to take the letter back, which had gone on Mary’s work record.

Mary reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue, and wiped her eyes and face. She took a deep breath of the air, which was fragrant with flowers and the odor of tobacco smoke from two students who were sitting across from her smoking cigarettes. She took her cell phone out, checked the time, and found that she only had five minutes to return to her desk.

She took another deep breath, rose, and walked back to the building where she worked. Whatever they dished out, she thought, she could take it, at least for today.