The Quiet Never Comes

Jill, can you come in here for a second. 

The instant message caused instant anxiety for the company’s compliance manager. 

Jill minimized the fifth interruption of the day from her CEO, and pinched her forehead. She breathed in and out in the measured way her Chaos Master had instructed. 

As she tried refocusing on her daily quest for inner peace, all the office phones shrilled at once, their insistence of being picked up a nagging declaration of urgency. She hyper focused on the aggressive crunch of staplers being forced down into thick packets of paper nearby and the main multifunctional printer jamming again. Her ears were assaulted when the intern beat its hollow sides and cursed for the stupid thing to just do its damn job. Obviously, he didn’t have the time or desire to walk downstairs to the more reliable one.

Jill’s breath hitched when the office gossipers walked by, cackling about Ronnie’s choice of skinny slacks that displayed a phony, odd-shaped bulge. They were making anecdotes about how he kept adjusting it when he thought no one was looking.

Jill tried harder to recenter. She squeezed her eyes shut until she saw white flecks of dancing light. She dropped her head down into her hands, and groaned low and long. What did her so-called Chaos Master know of the corporate world anyway? He wouldn’t last two hours in this din with his hippy-dippy enlightened facade. She decided to not ever return to his Thursday evening gatherings at nefarious construction sites again. That kind of cacophony was child’s play. She was a gladiator. 

While she wrestled with her inadequate means of unearthing equanimity, her muted headset was still tethered to the distant hum of business contracts being negotiated. 

She was expected to be more engaged in the discussion, but how could she when it was nothing more than a pointless repetition of prior agreements, and her boss lacked the awareness to give her the autonomy needed to execute the task?

No one noticed or cared that her calendar was blocked off and greyed out. Her status read Do Not Disturb and yet here she was—partitioned by a flimsy cubicle, disturbed by any and everyone at will. She was too giving—too compliant, she figured.

“Jill, do you have the overhead figures—Jill?”

At the mention of her name, she tuned back into the babbling chatter of project managers and finance analysts on the line. 

“Um, sorry. Yes. Overhead is at—” She spat out the figures from her triple checked spreadsheet and prayed she hadn’t missed an expense. 

Her job was riding on this deal. How could she feed herself and her two cats without this deal?

Her IM pinged again. Now, Jill.

Slamming the headset down, she paced to Mr. Sloane’s office. 

“Yes?”

He didn’t turn from his slow pecking on the wide keyboard in front of him. He peered over unnecessary bifocals at his multi-monitors, his mouth slightly open and lips moving to the subtitles in his mind. Without looking her way, he wagged his pointer finger in her direction. “Tone, Jill. That’s everything.”

She rolled her eyes at him. 

“Yes—sir.” She linked her arms behind her to offset the desire to fold them upfront in frustration. That, he would catch in his peripheral. Noticing her negative demeanor would set them on a pathway to a thirty minute lecture on proper body language and business etiquette, and she didn’t have the capacity. 

“See now. That’s better. So—I need you to show me the control key thing again to find the word ‘wage’ in this document. For the life of me, I can’t figure it out.”

Jill stared at the side of his pasty face, somewhat hidden by his too-long black toupee. He wasn’t fooling anyone. She wanted to put her fingers through the glued-on strip of fake hair, grip it tightly, and smash his head into the keyboard, playing a glissando with his face until she found the right keys. 

Instead, she entered the interior of the glass corner office and hit Control + F while making herself small before him. She didn’t want any part of her brushing against his creepy nature. When her two fingers released pressure on the keys, a black box popped open, waiting for his command. She slinked back to the doorway to put a comfortable distance between the two. 

“Ah! Yes! Don’t run off too far. I might need your assistance again, Jill.” He chuckled slightly for his own amusement, but she didn’t find a single word funny. 

She skirted back to her waiting headset and an angry email notification. The subject line was written in all caps. Nervous, she clicked into the body of the message and read it at a speed of 500 words per minute. After reviewing the complaint, she almost laughed in exasperation. 

One of the project managers had addressed her on the call and she blatantly ignored him. He was upset and ready to dissolve the deal if she didn’t answer for herself immediately. Somehow, she knew “helping my tech-challenged CEO” wasn’t going to appease the offense.

Jill. Another IM from Mr. Sloane.

That was it—her breaking point. 

She casually hung up the line, and placed her headset across the phone, careful not to tangle the cords for the next person. She tapped the power button on her computer and waited for the screen to black out.   

Then, Jill opened the top drawer of her desk and fished out her oversized purse. It was the only thing of hers she kept in the whole building. She never brought in pictures of her nieces and nephews—never left mementos or keepsakes propped in the corners of her cubicle like the other strange workers.

Jill clutched the purse to her chest just as tightly as she had held onto her dead end job. It was the only act to ground her in her ditch decision. Before she lost her nerve, like many times before, she got up and shuffled towards the front door, telling herself, “This is it—this is it.”

As she took those first few steps toward uncertainty, everything quieted. The phones stopped ringing, the electronics stilled, the whispers of the gossipers hushed. 

Her inertia towards the exit picked up. The closer she came to the door, the more tranquil her thoughts. Her hand outstretched for the door, she opened herself to freedom. After crossing the threshold into the silent parking lot, she smiled into the midday sun.  

Peace at last—she thought. 

As soon as she got into her car, her cell phone began chirping incessantly inside her purse. Vexed at the short lived sense of contentment, she looked at the caller ID, then answered. 

“Yes, Mr. Sloane?”

“Can you bring a large cup of coffee on your way back? I’m parched for my second cup.”

Jill rested her forehead against the steering wheel. “Absolutely—sir.”