Precarious

Just when I was getting used to nine-to-five life in the Windowless Stalinist Shopping Bunker From Hell, I am informed (via an urgent edict hidden away on page 16 of the weekly staff newsletter) that I am to be uprooted as a matter of urgency, and shipped on- again-  to pastures new.  Any hopes of a return to my former bucolic existence hidden away in a once-grand civic building on the edge of a slowly crumbling Victorian market town, however, are swiftly dashed.  Instead, I am to be dispatched- along with other discombobulated refugees from Manchester's Sleepy Westside- to Not-For-Profit Agency X's brand-new corporate HQ- a futuristically renovated multi-storey office, which, not content with its business-friendly location slap-bang on the thronging doublecarriageway which connects the Westside to the Outside World, further advertises its presence by being balanced (a little too precariously-looking for my innocent tastes) on a set of twenty-foot high concrete stilts.   

 

The following morning at 8:55AM I chain my scooter to one of the stilts (ostensibly to keep the scooter safe, but also to assuage a nagging fear that, unfettered, my new many-legged workplace could take it upon itself at any moment to set off at an unsteady but determined canter along the dual carriageway in the general direction of Altrincham, crushing pedestrians and saloon cars in its terrifying, inexorable path), and make my way (via a revolving door placed, with dissappointing adherence to convention, at ground level rather than suspended in mid-air) into what appears to be the lobby of a Five-Star Hotel.  Here I am greeted by one of several impeccably groomed women in black corporate livery, whose twin functions (as I am able to ascertain during the course of the week) are to perch decoratively on swivel chairs in front of the switchboard telephones which never ring, and to chirp an appropriate phrase ('Good Morning Sir', 'Good Evening, Madam') at anyone in a suit passing their line of vision.

Slightly startled by this ostentatious show of corporate hospitality (the equivalent at the Stalinist Shopping Bunker was Steve the front-desk-boy, whose typical opening sally, regardless of whether he was simultaneously engaged with fending off the attempts of a  harassed-looking customer to engage him in a conversation about Housing Benefit, went along the lines of 'Morning John, see City last night, what a bag of shite'), I mumble an unintelligible response to the black-liveried ladies, and, narrowly avoiding a collision with a glass-topped chair adorned with glossy brochures, make a bee-line for the lift.

 

An hour later I have reached the safety of my new workstation (comfortingly like my old one, right down to my computer having been liberated from the Stalinist shopping bunker and shipped ahead under plain cover), but I still haven't done any actual work.  This is partly due to the computer not being actually plugged into any of the new Nerve Centre's 21st-Century communications infrastructure, with the result that I have spent the first part of my arrival in the Brave New World burrowing away under desks searching for sockets and becoming entangled in never-ending thick blue cables and piles of ladies' handbags.  But even when by some minor miracle I am able to get access to my inbox (again, rather comfortingly like my old one, in other words full of Staff Newsletters with urgent edicts directed personally at me and hidden away at the bottom of page 16, beside the wordsearch), I still don't get any work done.

This unproductivity can be attributed to the presence before my unaccustomed eyes of  windows, which were a feature of the office environment that the architects of the Stalinist Shopping Bunker had dispensed with entirely,  evidently considering them a bourgeouis frippery and liable to detract from the Workers' Appreciation of the Dignity of Labour.  Here in the new HQ a diametriacally opposed dogma appears to prevail, with the result that the budget has been stretched to accommodate the sort of uninterrupted, vertigo-inducing floor-to-ceiling window coverage normally only found within Airport terminals and public aquariums.  Perhaps understandably, this sudden reintroduction to the forgotten concept of daylight has reduced me to a state of goldfish-like awe, and I am reduced, for large swathes of the working day, to entranced, bug-eyed admiration of the passing articulated lorries which rumble along the double-carriageway far below like so many of Frankie's matchbox toys.

 

A rather agreeable existence, in short, although it clearly can't go on, not least because the sharp-suited executive class of Not-For-Profit Agency X are based just beside me in their own goldfishbowlesque side offices and have taken to bustling past my workstation at intervals in a way that suggests (at least to my perennially paranoid mind) that they may be taking a less than equivocal view of this odd scooterbound fellow who appears to test the concrete stilts of the building by giving them all a quick shake every morning before deigning to enter the HQ, where he proceeds to do what appears to be very little that could be described as actual work.

 

Well it serves them right for first denying me daylight for six months and then arranging for it to be served up in dizzying abundance by aggressively cheerful ladies in corporate livery, or at least that's what I will tell the Employment Tribunal when the time comes.  In the meantime, I swivel on my new office chair (unlike the old one, it has no arms, meaning I occasionally fall off and land in a pile of discarded photocopying or in the lap of a passing executive) and survey Manchester's leafy Westside in all its suburban glory.  Somewhere faraway, under the tree-cover, a half-forgotten Victorian market town sleeps peacefully, its once-grand civic buildings, now disused, crumbling imperceptibly in the unseasonal springtime sunshine. 

Comments

[Abby]

Eeeee, this one made me dizzy. What sort of sandwiches are there in this new world? Is there a futuristic cafeteria perhaps?

[jonathan]

There is a futuristic kitchen with vertigo-inducing views of the Westside Panorama and a massive flat screen TV ostentatiously hanging from the cieling, or at least there will be when it's finished. For now the facilities amount to a microwave oven, a stack of office chairs, and a discarded desk from the old HQ, which serves as a dining table. It's not really open yet, so I had the whole place to myself the only time I went in so was free to enjoy a single-serving lasagne while contemplating the articulated lorries down below. Ooh it's a glamorous life in the Brave New World.

[Dan]

How man - I know a certain amount of vagueness is de rigueur for you Blog types in order to reduce the chances of mentalists rocking up on the author’s doorstep wanting to be best friends for life but, as you know, I am of the Westside and I am always interested in guessing where they’ve relocated you to (it passes the time at work you see). This one has me stumped… any subtle hints that will steer me in the right direction?

[jonathan]

Well Dan,if I was to tell you that the New Building was until a few years ago occupied by a household name mulitnational hi-tech conglomerate whose geographical provenance is shared with that of the proprietors of the workplace known on these pages as the flangedesk(and also that the New Building is located on the junction of a main road and a road bearing my surname, at least it would if you took one of the letters off, Im not telling you which) then that might get you somewhere. Another very slight clue is that ITS ON TWENTY FOOT HIGH STILTS BY THE WAY! TWENTY FOOT HIGH STILTS!

I will post this comment then spend the rest of the afternoon nervously looking out at the dual carriageway for any sign of friendly blog-obsessed mentalists attempting to scale the outside walls...

[Martin Q]

Would the main road in question be one that is good for making a 'clean' getaway perchance? If so, then according to Google Maps those stilts have shrunk... Still, I don't blame you for the vertigo. Windows can be a new and frightening experience for anyone who's lived a sheltered office existence for some time...

[jonathan]

Not a million miles away Martin, not a million miles away at all, you and Google Streetview between you have demonstrated the detective facilities of Holmes and Watson themselves there, and without even leaving the comfort of your laptop (unless it was you I saw being dislodged from the upper section of one of the massive cornerstilts this lunchtime and frogmarched off the premises).

[looby]

Oh dear, sounds like one too many white wines at a corporate reception, one little stumble and a weak point in the window undiagnoses in the latest Safety Survey, and that could be a painful journey.

The last sentence gives it a lovely poetic finish, btw.