It’s the day Annie on Stakeholder Pensions retires after fifty years, having started on her fifteenth birthday. It’s a day that promises creamy cakes and cringy speeches, with Annie no doubt waiting until five-thirty before walking out for the final time. Apparently she’s going to take up ballroom dancing, just for the opportunity to touch someone once a week.
We’re signing Annie’s card when Carol from Occupational Health comes up with her trolley, laden with Braeburns and bananas, because it’s Fruity Friday. She witters about Vitamin C, and claims we’re being corporately responsible with wonky shapes and zero packaging. At least she laughs when we ask if she could slip us a bag of fun-sized Mars Bars.
On our way to Meeting Room Two we pass Axel in Actuarial, finessing his “working hours to retirement“ spreadsheet. “I’m factoring in leap years, a sickie a month, and one funeral a quarter,” he says. He points to the cell at the top, showing the seconds ticking away while he works on this, his “meisterwerk“.
As we wait with our warm prosecco, Beth from Reception announces she’s set the Tier One drinks machine to free vend, using the code she’s charmed out of the engineer. Dana and Carly from Death Claims google face paint and pointy hats for the Halloween dress-down day, shaking their heads again over Nicki the intern’s “inappropriate” costume at the calypso party.
Through the window we see Sahid from Sales strolling with Minty from Compliance. We know he’s sick of flogging savings plans, dreams of an off-grid yurt in the Pennines or Mendips, longs for Minty to shout “Yes, Sahid! Take me with you!” But, like him, we know his copper-haired companion has six-year-old twins and a boyfriend with medals for cage fighting.
It’s the day, with Annie tearful at the front with her flowers and memories, we agree this isn’t such a bad place to work, what with the pension scheme, subsidised restaurant and occasional calypso party. It’s also the day the board announces we’re merging with Credit Suisse, that this office will be closing, that consultations on redundancies will start this very day.
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work features in 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, FlashFlood, Flash Frontier, Gooseberry Pie, Leon Literary Review, MoonPark Review, NFFD NZ, Oyster River Pages, Roi Fainéant, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere.
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