Alone in HQ Transcript

[Listen]

[An ax chopping wood; THEME MUSIC plays…]

[Host: Christopher Gronlund]

I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this show is not about lumberjacks…

My name is Christopher Gronlund, and every month I share a story. Sometimes the stories contain truths, but most of the time they’re made up. Sometimes the stories are funny — other times they’re serious. But you have my word about one thing: I will never — EVER — share a story about lumberjacks.

This time, I’m recording on the anniversary date of the day I came up with the show. In honor of that, for real, it’s the post-apocalyptic office story.

All right–let’s get to work…

* * *

[Narrator: Christopher Gronlund]

ALONE IN HQ

Employee #312566 walks through the wild buffalograss covering the Globotek lobby. High above him, dusty banners a full story tall hang from the ceiling:

GLOBOTEK: SHIFTING YOUR PARADIGM

GLOBOTEK: TOMORROW…TODAY!

GLOBOTEK: GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY

And his favorite of all:

GLOBOTEK: ONE IN ALL, INDIVISIBLE FOREVER

On the walls, oversized monitors that once welcomed visiting clients and informed employees of upcoming company town hall meetings have long gone dark. An array of clocks showing times in Globotek offices around the world stopped working a dozen years ago. The Zen waterfall fountain near the wall of windows is so dry that it no longer supports the algae once growing on it. Were it not for Employee #312566 filling the fountain’s basin with water from a nearby creek, the frogs and turtles calling it home would be dried up as well, or at least left to fend for themselves outside in the elements. A deer near the security desk raises its head at #312566’s approach and runs down the hall toward the cafeteria. As it passes, birds scatter from exposed ductwork in the ceiling and fly outside through broken windows.

It used to not be like this…

#

To know Employee #312566, one only needed to look at his annual performance reviews. Every year, he was the one his manager deemed as exceeding expectations. He was the one who could be counted on to work during weekends and holidays, while others slacked off and dared have lives outside of work. Working overtime was a fair tradeoff for health care and other benefits that seemed to dwindle a bit more each year. But that didn’t matter when Employee #312566’s 401K grew, and the value of his small house increased over time. He’d seen the United States and some other parts of the world on the company’s dime, even though it was mostly airport to job site to hotel to restaurant and back to hotel—that routine, repeated all week, until flying home on Friday with a bit of time to rest before getting back to work on Saturday.

It never bothered Employee #312566 that management told their subordinates to tighten the purse strings, while they took meetings in other countries, just to keep platinum travel statuses. When meets- and fails-to-meet-expectations coworkers said it was crooked, he argued their leaders worked hard and deserved it. Give to the corporation, and it would provide in turn. If they needed him to sweep streets around headquarters, he would have gladly done so.

And then one day, everything changed…

#

It took nineteen years for the technological collapse promised by many at the stroke of midnight in the year 2000 to become real. With the push of a big button, two childish world leaders started a war, which led to other countries jumping in so they wouldn’t feel left out. New weapons were revealed—power grids went down and never came back. Doomsday preppers finally had the “I told you so!” moment they’d built lives around. Everything crashed. Finally, all those people who swore they’d get off Facebook in the new year actually did…just not by choice.

And through it all, out of some sick habit, many returned to work, like zombies returning to the places they once knew when they were alive. Only now, instead of zombies, it was middle managers who had no idea what to do with themselves once connectivity and work went away. The old ones were long terminated in a bid to save on salaries and not fulfill pension payments. No one was left who remembered the times before email, when things were managed on paper. So they returned to their desks and clicked and clacked on keyboards, hoping dark screens would light up bright again and return to them a reason to exist.

When the world stayed dark, tempers flared, and many went mad. Employee #312566 heard the CEO of Globotek used a cow femur to smash the head of the CTO he blamed for all the company’s stumblings at the close of Q4, shortly before the power grid went out. Gone were the days of quick hallway meetings with promises to catch up over drinks when projects were done; gone was the social hierarchy based upon which floor one worked on. Gone was email—sweet email—answered from bed on smart phones late into the night.

The last thing Employee #312566 did with his smart phone was throwing it at a rabbit he ate for dinner one night. It was the first thing he ever killed, and he cried as he cooked it whole, the smell of burning fur filling the grill top where he piled sticks to build a fire in the cafeteria. The stench permeated the entire first floor, so he spent the night up top, in the CEO’s office, looking out over the dark town. The only lights in the distance came from dim campfires in custom fire pits that let him know people were still out there, small bands of people that had taken up residency in easier-to-defend McMansions rising above the trees. Employee #312566 initially wondered if taking up residency in Globotek headquarters was wise. It stood to reason, he thought, that others would come back, or worse—attack—but the building was haunted by something far worse than ghosts: the memories of what used to be.

#

In the beginning, the solitude was overwhelming. Employee #312566 considered joining others on the outskirts, if only to hear cherished words uttered by collective voices: synergistic, bandwidth, and his tingle-inducing favorite: impactfulness. But there’s a certain sadness in people left unmoored without a greater sense of purpose. Would seeing the influencers and thought leaders he once respected tending to their own waste and other lowly tasks steal from his mind the golden image of them that he’d built up inside? Would seeing them out of their element, lost like children unable to survive on their own, make him wonder if they were ever great leaders at all? It was better to go on alone, he thought, honoring those he once revered by keeping their tenuous authority alive in fabricated memories.

To be in such a large, empty space, though, left him feeling panicked at the start. Hearing eight floors of office space settle in the quiet of night stirred Employee #3126566’s imagination. Was that the sound of footsteps coming from the main stairwell by the security desk, or simply the knocking of a pipe no longer in use? A face looking in through the window in the dark, or his own visage reflected back against the glass?

Fear could not be allowed to prevail—Employee #312566 was determined to be the building’s keeper. Remembering a passage from a book he liked when he was younger, he wrote it down and carried it in his pocket, a tactile reminder to “Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in solitude.” That thought eventually came with a sense of peace and purpose. Soon he established a new routine based on days long gone.

Besides, he was never truly alone—there were others out there, some maybe even working to bring back all that was lost. He’d do his thing while they did theirs. In a strange way, it was why he liked working in HQ: it was possible to feel completely alone among eight-thousand people lost in their own tiny orbits.

As long as there are campfires on the horizon at night, there is hope.

#

Employee #312566 pauses at the security desk and says “Good morning, Steve!” even though he’s alone in HQ. It’s important to him to keep up the old routine: coming in just a bit before seven in the morning, saying hello to Steve at the security desk, and then getting to work. When Globotek was a thriving, humming thing, most employees passing the front desk were already too busy answering email on their phones, or thought they were better than Steve and his lowly job that they never acknowledged his existence. But Employee #312566 always said “Good morning, Steve,” at the beginning of his workday (and, “Have a good evening, Sharon,” at its end). He was a people person, after all.

Today he walks down the main hallway from the lobby—paved with cobblestones that once echoed the sounds of catering carts servicing lunchtime meetings—and eventually stops at the old Starbucks counter near the cafeteria. He drags a chair over to the chalkboard menu above the counter and erases the previous day’s inspirational quote:

“Don’t count the days. Make the days count.”
– Muhammed Ali

With a piece of blue chalk, he writes a new message in one of the many stylish scripts he’s practiced since things went dark:

“The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.”
– John C. Maxwell

Employee #312566’s workday begins on another chalkboard next to Starbucks that he pulled out of a conference room. A white board would be preferable, but most of the dry-erase markers in the building were already drying out when the lights were on and the building was full—now, their color is gone and their tips are like stone. On the chalkboard is a painstaking recreation of an Excel spreadsheet drawn by Employee #312566 to remind himself of better times.

He misses the sanctuary of Microsoft Excel. Life should be like that, he thinks: plug a part of it into a cell and let a formula make everything secure. Be the person who creates the formula that makes everything work, and achieve demigod status among your peers in a manner not even reserved for the person who can make Microsoft Word stop auto-formatting text.

In Employee #312566’s chalkboard spreadsheet, nothing entered in cells populates to other places, but there’s always that millisecond when he writes something down and expects  magic to occur before his eyes. He craves the days of mapped processes and tools that [mostly] worked. Today, the chalkboard is little more than a way to present a to-do list in a comfortable format: perfect rows and columns waiting for information to give them meaning in much the same way they once gave meaning to so many lives.

#

A Typical Day in The Life of Employee #312566:

At 5:30 a.m., he is awakened by an internal clock that’s yet to fail him in his forty-three years. Rising from several stacked yoga mats serving as his bed in the corporate gym, he heads to the locker room to relieve himself in one of the few gravity-fed toilets in the building. A water collection system pulling from a spring-fed creek keeps him not only alive, but affords him several creature comforts. When his morning workout is complete and logged, a make-shift shower bag washes away sweat and any remnants of the day before.

Breakfast is usually the Prairie Salad from the cafeteria, a mixture of nearby edible plants and pecans Employee #312566 mixes up in the evenings. When the Great Outage occurred and most people raided grocery stores for a temporary sustenance fix, Employee #312566 raided the library near GloboTek headquarters for a crash course in bushcraft and urban survival tactics. He will never run out of the fresh greens, nuts, mushrooms, and small animals that keep him alive. He tells himself that one day soon, he’ll begin making artisanal sourdough bread instead of basic hardtack, but even during the apocalypse there are well-intended tasks left undone in the rush of daily demands. Or maybe it’s just the way most human beings are wired, giving up bigger dreams for smaller tasks and the quick dopamine hit that comes with them.

After breakfast, Employee #312566 packs his computer bag and heads to work. He picks up trash on his commute from the back of HQ to the front. Over a full decade after the Great Disconnect, and plastic bags and the lids of fast food drinks are still deposited against the side of the building by the wind. He misses his old commute, with time to think about the work waiting for him each day, or queuing up podcasts when he knew traffic would be particularly heavy. What happens to a podcaster during the apocalypse, he wonders, when there are no more get-rich schemes to be shared, movies or television shows to review, or true crime to talk about; no more self-important hot takes on popular culture, long-winded interviews to schedule, or dude-bros who think they’re actually funny? Employee #312566 likes to think the guy with that lumberjack show found a solar charger and still writes and records his stories. Maybe with twelve years and little else to do, if the power ever comes back, he’ll have enough of a backlog to finally release his show again on a regular schedule.

Entering the lobby, Employee #312566 looks up at the banners hanging from the ceiling. He whispers, “One in all. Indivisible forever,” with a sense of pride and then checks on the frogs and turtles in the old fountain. While it’s dawned on him that in the fountain, he has a replenishing food source without the danger of forays into the woods, there’s something comforting about keeping other creatures alive in HQ. Besides, the croaking of the fountain frogs has become its own kind of white noise at night, something dependable to drown out the echoing creaks of such a large building.

Old habits mustn’t fade—Employee #312566 says, “Good morning, Steve,” as he passes the empty security desk on his way to the Starbucks counter to change the inspirational quote of the day on his chalkboard. Never one to establish a coffee habit of his own (after all, the excitement of work should be all one needs to fuel their morning), he misses the smell of the drink—to the point that early on, Employee #312566 brewed a pot each day for effect. Even now, long after running through the coffee stocks on all floors, he is still surprised headquarters wasn’t raided for coffee over other supplies. How many people died in the months and years after the Great Disconnect fighting over the cherished bean, he’s wondered? Somewhere, someone must have been bludgeoned to death by a stout coffee mug reading, “I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON.”

The rest of the morning is spent of the third floor, in his cubicle, where he types away on a long-dead laptop. The sound of typing is soothing. The memory of hot-key commands in proprietary software must never be forgotten. There are reports to read and papers to organize. (When they are all in order, it is not uncommon for Employee #312566 to throw an entire filing box worth of papers from the atrium to the lobby floor, only to retrieve them and sort them all over again.)

In empty conference rooms, there are imaginary meetings in which he plays all the roles. Even though the phones haven’t worked for twelve years, before meetings start, he repeatedly says, “Can everybody mute their lines, please? I’m getting a lot of noise on the call.” It always bothered him to hear typing during meetings—people clearly not one hundred percent devoted to listening to what leaders better than them had to say. He remembers when it wasn’t uncommon to hear someone’s dog barking in the background, another reason he believed everyone should be in headquarters and not allowed to work from home. Once, an at-home employee didn’t know her phone wasn’t muted, and the entire business unit heard her child approach and say, “Mommy, I make poopie…”

At lunch, he eats a handful of squirrel pemmican and hardtack at his desk, a reminder of busier days when there was no time to disconnect for even thirty minutes, let alone an hour. Coworkers taking hour-long lunch breaks clearly weren’t serious about their work, laughing and carrying on with others in the cafeteria—or worse, leaving headquarter grounds for nearby restaurants to “get away for a bit.” Nothing said, “I’m dedicated to my work!” like eating microwaved tuna at one’s desk, a malodorous message that you, unlike all those slackers rushing off to restaurants, believe in the work you do enough to do it even through your lunch hour. At least now, the sound of those never taught to chew with their mouths closed, smacking like feral animals at a carcass on a nature show, is a distant memory.

The rest of Employee #312566’s afternoon is spent in heads-down mode at his desk, clacking away at his keyboard, organizing papers, and writing reports no one will ever read. It’s as if he downloaded the contents of his laptop into his mind, and these daily exercises are a way to be prepared better than anyone else should things ever come back. He can see his computer desktop and the way his personal drives and network drives were all laid out. With a thought, he can track any file he ever worked on, watching folders cascade as memories he refuses to let go. So, when he pretends the director of his business unit stops by his desk and says, “I need the monthly TSR report as soon as you can generate it,” he grabs piles of paper and recreates them by hand, from memory. At the end of his workday, he heads downstairs, being sure to say, “Have a good evening, Sharon,” as he passes the security desk on his way out. But his daily work is not done; in fact, now the work of survival begins.

On his way to the back doors of HQ, Employee #312566 checks his snare traps for squirrels, rabbits, and anything else unfortunate enough to have taken the bait. He’ll never get completely used to dispatching and preparing food, but it no longer bothers him like it once did. Most evenings, he prepares dinner in a makeshift grill beneath an overhang out back. After that, it’s tending to food stores, collecting water, and cleaning waste. Never a complete germaphobe, he was still a big fan of hand sanitizer and doing all he could to never get sick. Today, cleanliness is his god.

Nights are still the hardest. Before the Great Disconnect, the urge to fill time alone with deeper thoughts or regrets could always be drowned out by booting up a laptop and working some more, or answering email on his phone while paying half-attention to a Netflix binge going on in the background. Now, he turns to books, like the times before work became an around-the-clock thing and people read more. To keep his mind busy, he’s trying to remember the smallest book in his collection, so he can recite its entirety verbatim all the way through. It’s a story about a street sweeper who brings light to the masses and ends up chastised for thinking outside the box. He sees himself in the character, a curious individual with good ideas that were often shoved down by authority. He can recite the book up to the last chapter. Tonight, he has a simple goal: remember to opening lines of Part Twelve.

He mutters: “It was when I read the first of the books I found in my house that I saw the word “I.” And when I understood this word, the book fell from my hands, and I wept, I who had never known tears. I wept in deliverance and in pity for all mankind.” Over and over he repeats the lines like a mantra, until falling into the darkness of sleep to the sound of frogs and crickets.

And so it goes, until one day…

#

Employee #312566 is startled awake when the building creaks like a waking god. Lights flicker and printers groan. Air rushes through the building as the old god takes its first breath in more than a decade. The smell of the HVAC system is atrocious: stagnant mildew and the scent of animals in various states of decay in the ducts. The long hallway leading to the lobby looks like the set of an old horror movie, with dark sections of dead light illuminated by flickering fluorescents and the red glow of EXIT signs.

Employee #312566 rummages through his gear on the far side of the gym. His eyes widen as old habits never fully gone return. He plugs his laptop into the outlet; lifting the screen and pressing the ON button brings his system to life. It’s like a vital organ returning to his body, making everything right once more.

His heart races as the sound of Windows 7 booting up fills the gym. The reflex is still there: before Employee #312566 can think, he’s types his password and presses ENTER. His breathing becomes audible as he clicks the Outlook icon in his system tray. The program comes to life. He begins the Reawakening at Inbox Zero.

#

Two days later, Employee #312566 hears it in the distance—once, such a common thing now just a memory. He cannot tell how close it is as he charges through the buffalograss on his way out of the Globotek lobby. He fears he’s too late as he rushes up a nearby hill for a better look, but the old sounds always did have a way of silencing the natural world, burying the beauty beneath its din. He waits for several minutes, the distant hum growing louder, until its source finally comes into view. A glint of sunlight on the windshield, and then the Doppler effect of the first car to pass by on the highway in twelve years. He waits for others, but no more pass by. Still, if there is one, more are out there. It’s now just a matter of time.

When Employee #312566 returns to HQ, he’s overcome with shame. Soon, others will arrive…only to see the lobby overrun by grass and frogs. Carpets near broken windows reek of mildew…a cafeteria sure to fail a health department inspection.

That night, he climbs the stairs to the eighth floor and sits at the CEO’s desk. Campfires in the distance have given way to a smattering of electric lights as McMansions glow once again. He catches movement on the highway: headlights! Even eight stories up and ensconced in the CEO’s glass lookout, it is the loudest sound in his world.

What will it be like when they all return?

Employee #312566 leans back in the big, leather office chair and closes his eyes, imagining being the one in charge. His heart races when the building shifts and is sounds like somebody entered the office. He opens his eyes, almost expecting to see the CEO standing in the dark, wielding a cow femur, ready to commit his last barbaric act before The Great Reconnect.

“We mustn’t think like that,” he mutters.

He makes his way downstairs in the dark. No need to light up HQ until it’s in proper shape. So much work ahead of him, but not much time. Anxiety settles in and…it feels good. Something needs to be done in a hurry, just like the days used to be when managers commanded the lives of thousands of underlings, giving their lives a sense of meaning and purpose, measured in stress.

Employee #312566 looks down the long hallway toward the gym. He decides he will not sleep there tonight. He considers working through ‘til morning, but the day’s excitement has given him much to think about. Soon, there will be no time to think; soon the race of days will return, and everything will somehow get done in the chaos of it all. Maybe not done well, but that’s what the marketing department is for.

He climbs the winding lobby stairs against three stories of windows. It’s like climbing into the sky. At the top, on the landing overlooking the lobby, he’s face-to-face with the GLOBOTEK: ONE IN ALL, INDIVISIBLE FOREVER banner. It shines so brightly in the moonlight, he would not be surprised if it gave off heat.

He sits down above it all, and recites the final chapter to the book he’s worked so hard to recite from memory:

It was when I read the first of the books I found in my house that I saw the word “I.” …

Now I look ahead. My future is clear before me. The Saint of the pyre had seen the future when he chose me as his heir, as the heir of all the saints and all the martyrs who came before him and who died for the same cause, for the same word, no matter what name they gave to their cause and their truth…

These are the last things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time…

When men accepted that worship, the structure of centuries collapsed about them, the structure whose every beam had come from the thought of some one man, each in his day down the ages…

Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope…

As Employee #312566 nears the end of the final chapter, he looks at the banner glowing before him, burning like a messenger. He knows what he must do.

He stands tall and proud and recites his own ending:

“And here, over the entry to our lobby, I will carve in the wall the word that is to be our pulse and breath. A word that will not die, even if the last vestiges of the system crash and we are no more. The word that cannot die in this building, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory.

The Sacred word:

OVERTIME.”

* * *

A big thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks. All music by Ergo Phizmiz and Kai Engel. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the show, the voice talent, and music.

In a month, I’m bringing you the weirdest father and son story I may ever write.

Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!