The Shift

Barnaby gazed out of his office window and imagined himself smoking moodily on the steel footbridge three floors below. He missed smoking and in his daydreams about it he was often overcoated and windswept in some gritty urban setting, giving off a sort of vaguely eastern European vibe. The footbridge over Chancellor’s Drive wasn’t exactly the Berlin Wall, but the mean little bridge which stapled the concrete campus to a surrounding fringe of woodland was the best he could do. 

Three papers was all he’d got through before his mind had drifted out of the unopenable window in the brutalist concrete ziggurat and down to the footbridge. Down on the bridge he was a man of potential, an enigma to any observer. His collar was up and he smoked navy-style, burning tip smoldering stealthily in a cage of fingers. As Bridge Barnaby turned to slouch thoughtfully on the waist-high railings a young woman in the uniform of a fast-food chain hurried past him. Barnaby briefly thought of the interesting juxtaposition of late twentieth century European post-structuralist intellectualism exemplified by his imagined self and the late capitalist consumerist dynamic suggested by the young woman’s instantly recognizable liveried cap and polo shirt. The immortally adolescent part of him wondered if the young woman could possibly fancy Bridge Barnaby, but mainly the sight of her blue cap and name badge just made him hungry.

Barnaby could not allow three marked papers and an embarrassing daydream to be the sum total of his achievements before he broke for lunch. He used to divide his days up into fag breaks but now there was only lunch and its new elevated significance was not reflected in the plastic imprismed tuna mayo and its meal deal accomplices that he would buy from the campus shop. He slid two papers off the top of the heavy pile that pinned his wood effect desk to the floor of the stuffy office. These two would be marked before he left the room. He picked one of them up and read the first line. Philosophy was misspelled. Barnaby folded his arms on his desk before letting his head fall heavily on them. He’d bought his jacket in the nineties when tweed had struck the young academic as arch and ironic. It had lived in a wardrobe for most of the intervening time but came out to keep him warm when its irony and his middle-aged body had started to feel equally exhausted. The thick woolly fabric used to hold a lungful of lingering fag essence as a reminder of its nights on duty with coffee and coffin nails driving Barnaby towards the completion of his PHD. Barnaby hopefully huffed the crook of his own elbow. Nothing. At least he had the PHD. If there was ever an emergency that could only be solved by someone with an extensive knowledge of the facticity of language and life in the early works of Martin Heidegger then he would be ready to serve. One more paper, then lunch.

Barnaby’s pen hovered over the paper, periodically snapping down like a toad’s tongue to ruin the perfect lines of print with squashed spiders of criticism. The tweed helped remind him that he was a self-regarding narcissist who needed to consciously maintain an attitude of restrained compassion when assessing the work of earnest first years making their first forays into subjects they only discovered for the first time a matter of weeks before their first deadline. Bridge Barnaby would write effortlessly witty things in the margins that would inspire devotion in his keen young charges. Barnaby looked out of the window and was about to start imagining another fag break when there was a knock at his door.

“Hello? Dr Everitt? I’m sorry, I know it’s not office hours but this was the only time I could come. I sent you an email.”

The young woman in the fast-food uniform stood at the half open door. Barnaby jiggled the mouse on his desk to rouse his dozing computer screen. A screen-filling block of unread emails faded into view.

“Oh, er never mind. Do come in. How can I help you?”

“Well, it’s just that, we spoke last week and you gave me some feedback on my essay…”

Barnaby stared hoping the image of the young woman would trigger a memory of the conversation. His mind, still not entirely back in the room from its latest trip to the bridge, recalled that he’d recently read a paper by Rupert Hagstrom at Lancaster about the power of olfactory memory. If staring doesn’t work; should he ask to sniff her? No, probably not. He made a mental note to reread Hagstrom and sniffed the cuff of his jacket in a time-buying pantomime of contemplation. He wished he had a cigarette. One thing he could certainly sniff out was an imminent request for a deadline extension.

“It’s just that it’s been a very busy few weeks and I’ve got a lot going on, and I know there aren’t supposed to be any extensions for this one, but…”

“Can’t do it I’m afraid. It’s four o’clock today if you want it marked.” As he spoke he looked back down at the paper he was half way through marking. Being firm didn’t come naturally to Barnaby. “Hang on, were you the one who was reading Being and Time?” Barnaby had been impressed that an undergrad was attempting the arguably untranslatable text by choice, let alone saying things that suggested a pretty solid grasp of Dasein. “Helen!”  

“Yes, that’s me!” Helen sounded mildly flattered that he had remembered her name and looked hopeful that this somehow increased the likelihood of an extension. “You gave me some really useful suggestions. It’s mainly done, but I’ve just run out of time.”

“Well, not quite. It’s only eleven. You’ve got five hours to give it one last push. No extensions I’m afraid.”

Helen looked down at her non-slip shoes. Barnaby grimaced. Was she dismayed by the refusal, or the realisation that he had not retrieved her name as a result of recalling her brilliantly insightful musings on Heidegger, but because she was wearing her name badge?

“I’m on my way to work. Twelve ‘till eight shift. Nobody would swap with me. I don’t really know any of them. They think I’m a weirdo. Anyway, I can’t do anymore work on it and I can’t hand it in as it is.”

Barnaby imagined an eight-hour shift in a fast-food restaurant. Or at least, his imagination put together a collage of snipped up parts of his experience to produce a sort of impressionist sketch of what it might look like. He saw himself standing behind a counter with nothing to do but listen and react. Even in the theatre of his mind the uniform didn’t fit him for some reason. Could serving burgers for eight hours be meditative? Would he be able to think about other things while he did it, or mercifully exclude thoughts of other things? He’d never worn a uniform or been paid for work you didn’t need a degree to do. He felt he had robbed himself of the myriad qualia that were to be experienced in this alien world. Could he be a complete person if he remained restricted to his life of tweed and smoke-free thought?    

“Have you got it on you?”

“Yes. I’ve just come from the library. I really was almost finished. I’d only need a twenty-four hour extension. Please. I have to do the shift or I won’t be able to afford my rent.”

“No extensions, but I might have another idea.” He stood up from his desk and stepped towards the window in a moment of hesitation. “I’ll do your shift.”

“What?”

“You stay here and finish your essay. Stick a cover sheet on it and leave it on my desk before four.”

“That’s mad. You don’t even know what to do.”

“I rather think that if you can tackle Heidegger then I can serve burgers. But no, you’re right. There would be questions. I suspect your manager would have something to say about it.”

“The manger never comes out of the office. I just sign in with this and crack on.” Helen held up a small bullet shaped fob. “Maybe not as many questions as you might think. There’s new starters all of the time. If anyone asks just say you’re on a shadow shift and ask what you should do,” she said, warming to the idea just as Barnaby was assessing it as a symptom of a mid-life breakdown. Helen’s sudden support, her willingness to consider a plan seconds after declaring its madness steeled Barnaby. The concept of a Shadow Shift, the lure of holidaying in an alternative life was suddenly irresistible to him. “Give me the fob. And your cap, and er… swap shirts? God no, sorry inappropriate. Sorry.”

The office door banged shut and Helen was standing in front of him in her bra with the fob, cap and shirt thrust out to him in one decisive fist.  

Barnaby spun away from her and stared wide-eyed out of the window. He noticed that down below, Smoking Barnaby was no longer on the footbridge. He saw his reflection in the plate glass window. A few whisps of thin grey cirrus made his translucent face appear to be floating in a cloud of lovely smoke. One shaking hand steadied itself on the waiting pile of papers on his desk, the other slowly reached for his top button.

Barnaby paused on the footbridge to look up at his office window. He saw Helen looking down at him wearing his tweed jacket, buttoned up for modesty after his rather sweaty shirt had been declined. She waved, fingers protruding from a too-long sleeve, the slow action matching the frown that she wore. But she was also smiling. Barnaby felt no such conflict. He held up an imaginary paper and mimed a furious scribbling action. Helen’s frown disappeared and she vanished from the window to get to work. Barnaby straightened the borrowed cap, pulled the tight polo shirt down over his belly and strode over the footbridge in the direction of town.