The Folly of a Post-retirement Assignment

Puking into the train’s toilet going to her first day on the job didn’t bode well. Alice had chosen a Wednesday to emerge from her year-long retirement. It can’t be too bad, she reminded herself, despite her stomach thinking otherwise. Hump-day starts only required surviving three days before she could recover from the shock of new material, politics, office space, computer filing systems … and colleagues.

They all turned and stared at her like she’d jumped off Mars, as Liz, the EA from HR, in her short tight skirt and ultra-high heels, escorted Alice across several work areas. Except for two middle-aged men, whose eyes fixed on Liz’s bouncy front, encased in its springy silk and cashmere wool top. For the purpose of comparison with Alice’s own clipped grey hair, sturdily laced shoes and once fashionable, now ten-years-old, raincoat, visitor from another planet was a good analogy. The smile on her face was lockjaw by the time she reached an empty desk.

“It’s open seating. That means you can sit wherever you like each day. You might want to avoid the noisy end of the room.” Liz waved airily towards a bird’s nest twitter of sound. “This is the quiet one. Tends not to be so busy.”

Is that because I’ll need to drop off for a snooze now and then at my age? Alice mused.

She decided her cynicism was probably more developed than Liz’s. She gave herself a mental slap. If this was going to work, she’d need to be a lot less sensitive and a heap more upbeat.

“Thanks, Liz. Yes, quieter is better for a BA,” she squeezed out in what she hoped was a suitable whisper, acronym slipping off her tongue with muscle memory.

On the long, shared desk, her neighbour, moved his paper stack to what he’d obviously decided was his side of an invisible line, and continued staring at his screens. No smiley face there. This place was about as welcoming as an iceberg. It’s general odour however was smelly feet, shortly explained by her neighbour’s sports shoes, carefully balanced on a tote, under her side of the desk. Icebergs would be odourless she mused.

At least the computer fired up and the temporary password, Welcome!Alice, worked on first try. It had been a while, but this was far from a first gig of this sort and at least eighty percent of the time she’d had to call for an IT assist as her first piece of work.

She laughed at a sudden flashback. Attempting to smother it, she bent down to liberate her own stack of papers from a briefcase. The odd, fuff-fuff-fuff sound of the compressed laughter that still escaped was decidedly like a fart. She wasn’t sure which would be considered worse. Fart, for sure, she decided. Especially as that did happen sometimes, quite randomly. Aging wasn’t kind. But was youth any more compassionate?

Alice’s first foray into the world of government service, forty years earlier, had been barely less torturous. The job title acronyms had prompted a seminal moment of memory, taking her once again to stand in the back of a room for a first, incomprehensible, group meeting.

“This team, now renamed WACK, is part of project SCONE which the PM and our CEO thought could solve the problem of AWAHI. The CFO and our GM are currently attending a HALO conference. Members of the resulting WG will feed into our intel on HA. All Tier Ones and their 2ICs will meet weekly for a dump meeting, so we can advise the PMSAG …” By that point she’d ascended into an out-of-body experience. Everyone below wore pink, blue or yellow jumpsuits with number patches on the back and carried clipboards with red papers, headed SCRT. And she was wishing she’d worn flat shoes because these high-heeled, pointy-toe boots were killing her.

In retrospect, little had changed, except that office space was now open-plan, with nowhere except the loo to hide when it all got a bit much – only the CEO had an actual office door. And, of course, there was her practical footwear and a different set of initials to learn so she could participate in the office-speak. She got up and followed door signs to the women’s toilet, thinking on the way maybe a wardrobe refresh might help her frame of mind. With the job came the makeover money. After all, that was the point of her return to work. Easy pickings. Get another little stash for a few treats and an overseas holiday. Superannuation didn’t stretch far.

After many deep yoga breaths, Alice had the courage to emerge from her stall.

“You new?” asked a woman who was gazing at her reflection while splashing water about washing her hands.

Alice couldn’t help noticing the woman, only about five years her junior, wore Jimmy Choo shoes, with a skirt and top cloning young Liz. Not a pretty sight. It wasn’t the result of the wardrobe upgrade she’d imagined. She gave herself another mental slap at the uncharitable thoughts. At least she felt acknowledged.

“Yes. Just now -”

“Oh God, I’ll never forget my first day here. Two months ago. Feels like a millennium.” She peered myopically in the mirror at Alice. “Like being back at school and the cool guys had sent me to Coventry for breaking the don’t-be-nice-to-teachers code. Still feels like that.”

“I guess it’ll get better.” She’d remembered her plan to be upbeat. The woman’s sideways glance indicated she was really not getting the point.

“… was a time when most work colleagues were the same age as me,” continued the woman, adding deep red lipstick to her younger image mimeograph. “After a while they turned into my children … Look out there! They’ve become my grandchildren …”

“Oh! I thought I was on my own with that.”

“Nope. There’s a few of us … very few … You’re a contractor too?”

“Three months. But I fear it’ll take me that long just getting up to speed.”

Alice wasn’t sure how to interpret the laughter that clattered off the toilet room walls. She waited.

“Just keep turning up. They’ll restructure again in another month, and you’ll get some other new idea to try and make sense of …oh yes, and smile, a lot.”

Alice did that reactively. “Thanks.”

“Great, you’ve got the hang of it … Coffee tomorrow, ten-thirty in the ground floor café?”

“Lovely ...” she called to the door swinging shut. Bat-shit mad. All of it … and herself. She’d abandoned a stone age cave in the mountains for a futuristic capsule on another planet.

On the way home in the train, her stomach now settled, she responded to the job-placement agent’s voicemail asking: “How’s it going?”

“Thanks for the opportunity, Lou, but this one’s not for me. Please let them know I won’t be back.” She was already longing for tomorrow morning. She’d take coffee and toast back to bed, prop her computer on a cushion, and write her next short story. Maybe a dystopian one about the folly of accepting a post-retirement assignment.