Daydream — How a Middle-Class Working-Stiff Makes a Decision.
A parable about the frustration building up in middle-class working-stiff manifesting in other ways. How the responsibilities keep him in the low-wages slavery and prevent him from rising up above mediocrity and pursuing his dreams.
The greatest addiction of 21st century is not alcohol, not cigarettes or any kind of drugs. The greatest addiction is — mediocrity. It gives a false sense of security and a habit of self-righteousness which is an absolute necessity for its existence. Man confines his happiness and his sadness within its boundaries. He doesn’t desire a greater happiness and shudders on the thought of greater grief. The contentment offered by it is incontestable. The mediocre short-sighted certainty seems far better prospect than the cold uncertain road of greatness. And its veil is so strong that one can hardly see beyond it and remains charmed by it until this veil breaks and the false sense of security shatters. This brings the greatest pain. Losing the definitive object of mediocrity gives an impression of a cosmic loss, one which cannot be endured.
He came hurriedly to his desk after an extended meeting and plugged in his dying Pentium laptop to charge. His request for a new laptop had been rejected due to company policies; and after multiple follow-ups, the request for a new battery was still pending under some level of approval. So, his old laptop could hardly breathe for half an hour without the ventilator.
He started to rush for the restroom which he had been holding for a long time; and wanted to release the pressure before the next meeting, when he saw an email pop up. The MV job had failed — the job which should never fail and should be fixed that very instant or there would be a rapid response call. He thought his bladder had little more space and he would go after fixing this job.
He clicked on the Outlook icon from the Taskbar to open his inbox. The screen went white and the cursor turned into an hourglass. After a few random violent clicks around the screen, he decided to close Outlook. But the hourglass prevented him from clicking on the cross-mark on the top right corner of the Outlook window and “Outlook is not responding” message appeared on the title.
“Alright!” he muttered, “I can do without Outlook. Let’s see the failed job in output-manager.”
He clicked on the Reflection icon in the Task-Manager, but it seemed to be frozen. Everything seemed to be frozen and his cursor made a trail of many tiny cursors wherever he moved it. The fan of his laptop was whirring like it was about to take off any moment.
“Hmph,” he exhaled and sat upright, his left leg shaking like it was independent of his brain’s governance.
“Goddamnit!” he muttered and pressed CTL+ALT+DEL keys to open Task-Manager. Nothing happened for some time, then suddenly everything came to life and he witnessed all of his activities from last 2 minutes. Outlook was closed, Reflection was opened, then minimized again, Desktop appeared, a word document and one excel sheet were trying to open as a result of those frustrated random clicks and suddenly a blue screen appeared to answer his previous summons of CTL+ALT+DEL. He rolled his eyes, took two deep breaths and clicked on ‘Start Task Manager’.
Again, the desktop appeared with a white box in the middle which was supposed to be the Task Manager. He pressed his desk with both hands and drifted backward in his chair, rested a hand on the hand-rest and put his face on his palm. He folded one leg over other and stared at the screen. He contemplated if he could go to the restroom while Task Manager loaded. But he dropped the idea, thinking he might waste a few minutes if Task Manager appeared just after he left. He was right and task manager appeared — CPU usage 99%.
“What the hell?” he groaned. He switched to Processes tab and waited for it to respond. Another Outlook popup appeared or tried to appear but got lost in the whiteness. But he knew it was a reminder for the next meeting which was in 15 minutes. He thought he would skip the meeting but remembered that it was with the client and he was the host.
“I can fix this in time and start the meeting,” he thought. Processes tab had appeared, and he sorted it with CPU usage. It took its time and he was prepared for it.
He found the culprit process — ‘mcshield.exe’.
“McAfee… find some other time to update your shit,” he said and clicked on ‘End process’. He started thinking about the failed-job and how he would fix it, how much time it would take to find the corrupt policy, strip it from file and restart the job. Then, a pop-up appeared with McAfee on the title bar ‘An unexpected error occurred. Your system will restart now.’
“What? No!” He tried to find a cancel button but there wasn’t any. “Of course, I killed the antivirus process. Damn you company policy,” he sighed, and his hand reached his forehead. He threw his glasses on the table, rubbed his face and closed his eyes.
The frustration that had been building all this time was ready to erupt. He was so pissed that he just didn’t want to vent-out so easily as to shout hysterically and punch the laptop, no, he wanted to punish it cruelly and draw satisfaction out of it.
He fancied himself carefully picking up the external keyboard and thrusting it into the monitor, then pulling it back and hitting it three times on the corner of his desk. He could see everything clearly in his head and could feel the ease it was bringing.
He saw the keyboard breaking into two pieces and keys spreading across the table and floor. Then he saw heads popping out of surrounding cubicles. Without paying any attention, he lifted his laptop and hit it on the desk. The screen shattered, a part of the keyboard was in his hand and the screen was on the desk. He saw himself lifting the monitor and bouncing it on the floor, shattering it into pieces of different sizes. He saw the mouse was still intact, so he dropped it on the floor and crushed it with his foot. Then he dropped the remains of his laptop on the floor and kept jumping over it until it was crushed into the pieces of satisfactory size.
He saw a tall obese man strolling down the aisle with 2 security guards and found himself escorted by those security guards to the office gates with a box with his personal belongings in his hands while everyone was staring at him with open mouths and scared looks on their faces. He saw himself in the lift of his office and his manager in a meeting room with him, telling him the consequences. He saw HR’s cabin and his final exit interview.
He saw the empty house he was leaving behind, the house which was his only partner all this time, which celebrated with him in happiness and consoled him in sorrows. He saw himself at the bus stop, waiting for his bus back to his hometown. He saw his girlfriend breaking up with him and marrying someone else. He saw a bus going on the weary, dusty roads, on the way to his hometown and he, sitting on the window seat gazing the dirt. He saw the medical-bills of his father and the ‘insufficient amount’ message from an ATM machine, he saw the small blue door of his home and his mother waiting for him sitting on a chair with father standing on the side. He saw tears in her eyes when she saw him arriving and hugged him with suppressed tears.
His daydream broke suddenly with this unbearable sight.
He looked at his suspended monitor, still stuck on the logoff screen, struggling to shut down. He rubbed his eyes as if he had just woken up and pressed the power button with a sullen expression on his face. He kept his finger on the power button like a pillow on someone’s face and waited for it to die. After a few moments, the struggle stopped, and it died. The fan had stopped and there was a strange silence which he was unaware of till then. Was it so blaring? he wondered. He again pushed the button, lights blinked, and the fan started, piercing the silence. He rushed to the restroom and came back with an unknown sense of happiness. He was glad that he had seen it all through and calmed himself down.
A few years later, when he is laid-off from the company, he wonders if he should have thought a little further, and he should not have stopped at the door of his home. That he should have dreamed a little more.
© James Common 2019
