REASON FOR PROMOTION

“Right then, who’s coming to the pub?”

Angela, returning at that moment from her daily ritual of locking herself in a focus booth, blinked at Daniel. “It’s three in the afternoon.”

“Oh, so much for spending the past hour ‘sorting your Outlook’, Ange,” Daniel said. “Thomas sent an email around the whole office telling us to finish early. Security and all. Blizzard en route.”

Tobie looked up from his copy of the email. His mouth half opened before his eyes dipped back to his spreadsheet.

“You better be nearly done,” Phil said, leaning and wincing. “You remember last year, don’t you? We don’t get emails telling us to finish early unless we really need to.”

“Yeah, I remember.” Tobie winced. 

“I’m just saying, alright. That road gets bad, and I think you’ve got a really good promotion case this year, you’ve just got to watch yourself.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tobie said. Then, desperate to change the subject, looked at the white sky. “It wasn’t this bad last year. Couple years back, when I started, we never got any snow, let alone—”

Phil’s voice dropped. “Alright, alright, keep your voice down. Didn’t you hear what I just said? Watch. Yourself. Alright?”

“I didn’t even say the words ‘global’ or ‘warming’, mate.”

Phil looked about ready to slap a palm over Tobie’s mouth. “Yeah, and you don’t have to! You don’t really think Jess explicitly said those words either, do you? No, she just made the slightest reference during an interview and—wham!—she’s gone. Head office is on a warpath, right now. Aren’t taking any risks. We absolutely cannot go against the official position by saying stupid things like climate change is real.”

“Oh, come on, this isn’t an interview.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Tobie caught Ange trying to be discrete while she stared at them. Despite his bravado, his chest tightened at the thought of a witch hunt, but eased when she opened her mouth slowly, shifting her glance towards their boss.

“Say, Daniel, have you put forward your promotion referee yet?”

“Oh, for Jess’ vacancy? No way. Haven’t and won’t.”

“What?” She almost dropped her laptop as she shuffled closer, her shoulders hunching with the suggestion of a secret whisper but her voice snagging everyone’s attention. “You’ve got a golden ticket to pass out. You’ve got to pick someone.”

“Nope, not happening.” He crossed his arms—that telltale gesture that translated to ‘I’m done talking’—but let them fall when he realised he had an audience of the entire office. “Look, not being funny, but head office just wants to use me as a scapegoat. They don’t even acknowledge receipt of these things. If I sent off your name, Ange, for example, that’s the last I’d hear of it unless something went wrong. If you’re good, they’d say they made the decision. If you screw up, then it’s my neck.”

“Charming.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Ange. Now I’ll ask again. Who’s coming to the pub?”

A clicking chorus of closing laptops answered the call. Phil turned to Tobie.

“Hurry up and shut down, you can do that later.”

“One sec, I’ve got to finish this.”

“Forget it and just buy Daniel a pint. He’ll find that more memorable.”

“No can do. Look, I won’t be long.”

“Alright,” Daniel said, pacing and clapping, looking like a Roman Emperor (or, at least, Tobie’s mental image of one). “I want all laptops left behind in lockers or offices. We are not having a repeat of last time. QRM audits coming out of my arse after that. Best case scenario the roads aren’t clear in the morning either and we get a day off work.” 

“Dude.” Phil was on his feet, legs pumping liked a drowning man treading water.

“Calm down, it won’t take a minute. Head out and I’ll be right behind you, alright?”

“Like last year?”

“Oh, just trust me, I’ll be fine.”

“You better be.” Phil said, and then he was off, joining the frenzied tangle of bodies surging towards the lockers. Sharks to the feeding frenzy, rattling the pin-coded bars of the only obstacles between here and boozy freedom.

Tobie’s neck subsided and his head found the crook of his elbow. If he focused hard, past the heartbeat in his eardrums and the chatter of his schoolchildren colleagues and the absolute, wintery silence of the snowfall outside his window… if he really tried, he could just make out a single bird song, stranded in a tree somewhere. Or he could convince himself that’s what he was hearing, at least.

Footsteps roused him with a flurry of palpitations, but it was just someone sprinting to deposit a laptop in an office down the hall. Still, it was too close for comfort.

Before someone else came to insist he shut down and agreed to be escorted from the premises, he tucked his computer into his bag and made for the emergency stairwell. Two floors up, where the team project rooms were already abandoned, he found his favourite corner booth—preferred because of how out of the way it was—and opened his laptop again.

He logged back in. He looked at the spreadsheet. It wouldn’t take that long to finish; if he started now, he could probably be logged off before the queue of cars had even drained off the estate and catch a lift from Phil.

He sighed, tapped his foot, returned his head to his folded arm and woke up an hour or two later, when the lights were off and the world had turned white.

He rose, blinking and swallowing and making sounds like a living corpse. The motion of his palms over his eyes activated the motion sensors, and the lights flicked on with a gentle tinkle of electricity. Tobie glanced back at the outside world, now replaced with a reflection of his own stretched limbs, and slid from the booth and to his feet.

Looking first to his phone, the buzzing of which must have stirred him, he scrolled the messages (at least five, maybe as many as ten) that Phil had sent him; read the summarised transition of his mood from You nearly here? to You better not have, to Seriously? Again?

With a fleeting glance at the spreadsheet, Tobie shut the laptop. It was only expenses. Expenses, he thought, that they’re not going to pay out any time soon, anyway. Not if the rumours and the share prices were anything to go by.

Instead, he wandered, first around the breakout area, finding the right lie for his reply. He settled on Relax and Nearly there, then migrated by instinct through the halls, lights flicking on to illuminate his path like a horror movie in reverse. Before long, the entire floor was alight: a horizontal beacon in the abandoned white-out of the industrial estate.

And Tobie, at first angry at the pointless indulgence of keeping the lights on standby in an evacuated building, indulged a moment of needlessness and found himself standing in front of the client lift. 

The lift had only been open to him once: the day he’d visited for his final interview and had been escorted to the top floor in the perfect mirrored box. 

Another time, running late to a morning huddle, he’d tried his luck (not only was there never a queue, he’d put money on the lift being faster), only to have to sidle, sweating, past the sponsor of their largest client account when they intercepted each other at his floor. That encounter had cost him his promotion two years ago, he’d put money on that, too.

Only now there were no clients to insult and no senior managers to catch him loitering and shoo him away. Now he could press the button and train his ears to the high, airy whoosh in the walls as the lift descended; could feel the lonely vibrations through the worn carpet. Now, when the doors opened and he stared back at himself through the mirror, he could step onto the polished floor and see his reflection below, above and all around. Tobie Matthews in endless dimensions.

His fascination lasted as long as it took for the flatscreen monitors to flare up and spew the newest corporate ad. A woman on top of a mountain; a person in a wheelchair playing sports; families from ethnic minorities throwing dinner parties, all posing to smile at the camera and recite scripted garbage. 

I’m part of a family. 

I feel represented. 

I’ve been reduced to a cog in a machine I don’t believe in.

(Alright, maybe not that last one)

Tobie hated that video. He might have felt differently if it hadn’t been the result of a lawsuit. Might have forgiven it if he hadn’t heard canteen complaints about the circle jerk political correctness. 

“Where’s the man drinking a pint“, Daniel had asked a new hire without an opinion of his own. ”Don’t I deserve fair representation?”

If not for the memory of eavesdropping on that conversation, Tobie might not have rushed out of the lift quite so quickly, stumbling into the client suite without slowly drinking in the refurbishment. But he did, and when he regained his composure the new sensations scorched his lungs like he’d swallowed water.

Somehow, the air felt softer. Warmer, too, like the room was suspended in space. Not the real space, of course, all silent and lifeless and cold, but how he imagined it: that perfect galaxy, infinite starlight, far removed from the real world with its sky full of clouds.

It’s the smell, he thought, not quite incense—no, too smooth for that—but not far off. Between the sweet, soft air and the warm lights glittering through a canopy of hanging terrariums, he almost forgot he was still in the office. When he remembered, he wished he hadn’t, because it was instantly tainted by the dissonance between this magnificent space and the weekly memos, the layoffs, the tightening noose of departmental budget cuts… 

Tobie closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was just stood in a room. A stupid, costly room. Perfume to cover the plague. 

Trying not to think about it, he turned away into a conference room.

He’d been here too, three years ago, maybe as many as five, when he’d actually managed to get a promotion case taken seriously enough to earn an interview panel. Nothing very personal—they’d made him stand because they ran out of chairs—but he had been close. So close.

But not close enough. 

Because the interview panel was exciting, sure, but it fell slightly second best to the rumours of the coffee machine.

“Best coffee I’ve had in my life, hands down”, said James, since resigned.

“These capsules—oh, these capsules!—are from Djimmah. Do you know they make coffee there? Do you even know where there is? Me neither”, said Alison, a month before her redundancy.

“I’d die for that coffee”, said Peter, now dead (unrelated).

But Tobie had never had machine coffee before. So when he crept, one sidestep a minute, towards the machine, selected one golden capsule, slid it into the machine, pulled back the handle, inserted his cup and pressed the button for a double (it was interview day, and he was feeling brave) he didn’t expect the long, grinding gurgle and roar.

 Neither did he expect that his blackout attempts to silence the machine would result in his coffee being thrown across himself and the carpet.

What he did expect, as soon as he saw Jess’ smouldering expression, was that they suddenly wouldn’t have time to review his promotion case. This was back in the day when Jess was more than tasteful gossip and had, amongst about 20 one rules, the One Rule that she was never to be interrupted. This was also back in the day when Tobie accepted whatever happened to him. So, when he received no emails asking him to reschedule, he let another promotion opportunity die.

But Tobie’s melancholic submission hadn’t lasted any longer than Jess had. In a way, when she left, so too had the recognisable version of himself. The new Tobie might have hidden under the identical skin of the old one, but here he was shedding. Here he was inserting a golden capsule into the machine and pouring a double. Here he was bringing the coffee to his mouth and here he was smiling.

“Not bad,” he said to himself. Only it wasn’t just ‘not bad’, it was good. Great. Amazing. It would have been worth losing a promotion over, if he’d actually managed to drink it at the time. And sure, maybe it was another example of corporate excess gone too far, but if he had to make just one allowance, here it was.

Feeling the rush of the caffeine and the power of his voice, then, he circled the table to Jess’ old seat, now his, and kicked his feet onto the table. Another sip of coffee strengthened the power fantasy.

“No, Ange,” he said, giving voice to things he wished he had the courage to say. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to cut the L&D budget to make up for the sales department missing their quota. In fact, I think it’s a stupid suggestion. It would perpetuate the problem.” He sat up, imagining her face at the end of the table. Imagining all the times she’d gaped at him like he couldn’t tell. “Per-pet-you-ate. Do you know what that word means?”

He imagined the slow opening of her mouth, and he stood up, downing the rest of his coffee and shaking his head. This was getting out of hand. 

So, remembering why he was stuck in the office and that is wasn’t so he could sneak through client suites and meeting rooms, he left. Halfway to the lift, he turned again, skirting back to the emergency stairwell—the one tucked into the northern end of the building where, with none of the normal heating to offset the unbroken winds from the fields beyond the estate, the air was always arctic. Today it was worse. But that was good. The cold always reminded him of his injustices, and they were already fresh in his memory from the tour.

First, he returned to the third floor: the project rooms, his booth and laptop. Tobie gathered his things, stopped by the kitchen space to deposit the evidence coffee mug in an anonymous dishwasher, and returned to the stairwell.

Two floors down, he was furious. The stairs had worked, in part, but returning to the heat of the empty office did most of the work. Yeah, I get it, he thought, expensive computers and servers. But really? Heating on 24/7?

Navigating the abandoned hot-desk burial mounds to his locker, Tobie thought back to the last time he had seen the department this empty: the day after last month’s Christmas party, when he was the only person to show up to work before midday the morning after. And though, at the time, he’d been quite pleased they’d settled on a bring-your-own-beer office party instead of booking out another hotel and an open bar, he recanted when, at eight thirty the next morning, the office still smelt of said excessively-brought-beer.

But now he was getting distracted again. Now he was leaving his things by the lockers and heading straight for Daniel’s office. Now he was slipping inside and locking the door. Now he was drawing the blinds, too. Just in case.

Half an hour later, laptop and bag swapped for the coat and wellies in his locker, he was back in an emergency stairwell. Only this exit, leading out to the carpark, wasn’t known for being cold. This one was known for opening directly into the covered smoking shelter. Because that made it the quickest route for a tactical smoke, it was also known for not being alarmed.

So, unlike a year ago when spending a night snowed in had cost him his last promotion—had nearly cost him his job, actually—tonight he was better prepared. 

Tobie closed the door behind him, shook it to make sure it was locked (and it was, so no turning back now) and started walking, new snow settling in his footprints as he went.

He breathed in snow, breathed out clouds. Somewhere in a tree, a bird song joined the crunch of his feet to add colour to the winter canvas. Or he could convince himself there were birds singing in the snow, at least. Imagination or not, it didn’t matter. He laughed out great plumes of factory smoke as he left the estate behind.

The memory of the Christmas party drifted back to him, as he walked. Of a drunken Daniel and a heated argument about password retention policy.

“Do what I do,” he said, spilling beer over the new printer. “Take a name—could be family, or a client, but I just use the company name, myself—and add the current month and year afterwards. Meets the character and number requirements and, if you get into the habit of changing it every month, you don’t get all the reminders. What? Don’t look at me like that. When are you going to have a chance to log into my computer?”

Tobie smiled as he walked. The when had required some planning, but the why had been easy, as soon as Daniel said, for the first of many times, that he wouldn’t be referring anyone for promotion. That they wouldn’t even acknowledge receipt.

The hardest part, though, logged into the form and filling in his details, was the REASON FOR PROMOTION field.

It took some time, but eventually he figured it out.

Great use of initiative.

Tobie picked up the pace, his legs burning and his fingers freezing in his pockets. If he hurried, he might still make it to the pub before Daniel left.

After all, he probably should buy him that pint.