Office Notifications

John receives a call and a text

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Lies I Tell My Kids. This is episode 17, “Office Notifications.”

It’s a Monday, a goddamn Monday, and I’m up easily to get the kids off to school while Sadee gets dressed for academic senior administration. Dean Sadee Nabbon, PhD. She’s well organized as usual, and there’s no taking a sip of juice and a bite of toast so that she can beat the rush and make it to her first meeting. She’s a planner, both for breakfast and for life. She likes me to choose and make her breakfast and I’ve been doing so since about a month into my unemployment, now approaching a full year alas. There’s a niblet of success in it for me when she’s pleased with the meal and finishes it all, and for her there’s healthy sustenance for whatever a dean does all day. (I gather it’s mostly meetings, politics, and dealing with prima donna faculty members.)

I’m alone again. Everything has been tidied away and the flotsam that she and the kids left in their wake has been removed to the dishwasher or to the cupboards. I stand in the middle of the kitchen for a minute, look at the ceiling fan as if it might provide inspiration or encouragement, but then lower my head with a sigh and go to my desktop computer. This is a routine now. I have emails from online employment sites I have signed up with. These vary crazily in their usefulness and applicability. I have set criteria for what I am looking for and input my certified qualifications, but in the midst of appropriate leads and recommendations, there are outliers that sometimes make me laugh in their impossibility. I presume it’s some glitch with the matching algorithm or whatever it is in the guts of the site that does the selecting. A position as a project manager in Doha, Qatar. Minimum qualification: Master of Engineering. Three jobs in a country I have never heard of, and I’m too jaded now to even Google them to see where they are. And the featured recommendation: How does Hotel Manager in Antigua sound at $175,000 a year plus benefits? Well, it sounds a great job in some ways, but not one that I am looking for.

Ah, but this time one job does free itself from the swamp and manage to struggle haltingly ashore for my consideration. Office assistant at one of the local food kitchens. I double-check to see that it’s not a cook at that kitchen, and it’s not. At the end of the ad I read that it was formerly a volunteer position but that they admit frankly that it was difficult finding a qualified person who could commit that much time. They need someone four days a week, and the salary is minimum wage plus fifteen percent and with a few benefits. Free meals, appropriately, I decide, eating what the homeless do. Flexible hours within reason, which means that I could occasionally switch the fifth day off from, say, Monday to Wednesday.

I’m excited because the commute would be a lot easier than it would be to Qatar, and it’s local and modestly remunerated, meaning the pool of applicants is going to be shallow. Wanted: warm body. Must know how to operate a coffee machine. 

I complete the application and attach all the specific personal documents, which of course I have ready to go because this is at least the two hundredth job I’ve applied for. Within seconds I hear the familiar dinging notification in my email—that will tell me that they have received my application—but within fifteen minutes my cellphone rings. I check the caller display: FDD KITCH NL.

“Hello?” I answer, shock and surprise and genuine anticipation vying and combining to make me sound a little shaky.

“Yes, hello, Mr. Nabbon, please. John Nabbon.”

“That’s me,” I say, still a bit shaken.

In short he says that he likes my résumé and asks if I could come for an interview the following day. I somehow manage to grunt and cough out what I hope sounds like an enthusiastic but professional “Yes,” and he then proceeds to give me the details.

“It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Nabbon. See you at two-thirty then.”

I slump onto our cushiest armchair with a whoof sound and am giddy as a kid as I contemplate the possibilities. I smile in spite of myself, in spite of months of sometimes feckless half-hearted searching, in spite of those same months having nearly worn me down to despair. I imagine my wardrobe from bottom to top. Those expensive black leather shoes that I snagged when times were better. My favourite black socks with the red at the toes. Casual but sharp dark taupe pants, not tight, not baggy, that go well with the simple white dress shirt that I just happen to have drycleaned and ready to go in the closet. I decide to get a new belt: the holes on the one I wear every day now are starting to splay.

I also decide on not getting a haircut because I don’t want to look too, let’s call it “corporate,” and with that I get up from the chair. My phone makes the notification sound for a text message. It turns out to be Josh, the private investigator, and he says he wants to meet me later in the week.