Jarrod
Jarrod decided that the day demanded the purchase of a
book. As he slotted Milton back on the shelf, he was surprised to discover just
how much space he had been apportioned. There was clear space on both sides,
easily sufficient for an additional presence.
Mansfield’s name had been mentioned in connection with
Lawrence – and perhaps Woolf – he remembered, prompting a momentary flush of
guilt to fill him with restlessness at his own reluctance to pursue the
reference earlier. Milton required an adversary, a rival for the space he was
so unnecessarily occupying, and Jarrod had decided, with remarkable haste, that
Katherine Mansfield would be assigned the challenge.
He checked his watch. 5.45. He jerked his head forwards
in frustration. What sort of world didn’t sell books at 5.45? The restrictions
of working hours were unacceptable. Forget public transport or the health
service, this would be the first thing he would change when in power. From
entering data to making the data: the English dream.
It had only been three weeks since he had first shaken
the hand of a man named Gavin and been shown to his ‘booth’. Gavin’s hollow
expression upon learning that William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was
a distant relative had immediately indicated that stimulating conversation was
most likely an unlikely prospect, as he rebuffed further attempts at
interaction by pointing his chewed-finger-nail-fingers in the direction of the
monitor, the mouse and the manuscript. The trinity of data entry. As Gavin
waved his slightly-shaky hand over the keyboard, Jarrod noticed that the letter
‘m’ was signified by a paler white than the rest and began compiling a list of
likely m-led words that might prompt such regular visitation of the fingers. It
would be one of the first things he would reflect on once Gavin’s clerical foreplay
was over and the real work begun. Work that, whilst likely to bring undoubted
moments of tedium and regret, would surely be a breeze for a man who once
secured a forty-words-a-minute score as an eleven year old user of Touch Typist Pro. It wasn’t, of course,
the highlight of the CV he had submitted to Personnel
Pros but he made sure it appeared under ‘Other skills and interests’,
masquerading as merely another additional ability, the most socially acceptable
IT skill he had developed over months of self-imposed solitary confinement
following his parents’ surprise decision to place the family computer in his
room. He hoped, for Gavin’s sake, that there would be no need for him to
demonstrate the other, less welcome, skills.
It was 9.37 when a recurrence of the repetitive strain
injury he had acquired earlier that year left him with no choice but to pause
from his work and maintain his meditations and musings on the mysterious medley
of m-words applied to his keyboard by a previous booth-dweller. It also signalled
Gavin’s reappearance, as the musty smell of a morning cigarette loomed over
Jarrod’s shoulders, whilst he lowered his slightly-chipped glasses to peer
intently at the screen before him.
‘Mmm. Not bad,’ he mumbled, snorting forcibly, as if to
add punctuation to his words and thereby document them as an official appraisal
of Jarrod’s first 37 minutes. It was not an affirmation that Jarrod
particularly needed or desired and yet the suggestion that his efforts were
only ‘not bad’ left him feeling a little deflated, as if he had expected the
moment to play out quite differently. He smiled as he pictured Gavin spinning
his chair round, lifting him to his feet, embracing him and holding him at
arm’s length before looking him in the eyes with undeniable sincerity and
tearfully whispering the word ‘terrific’, his head slightly tilted to the side
in awed wonder at the brilliance of Personnel
Pros’ greatest ever find, the man who had redefined just what it means to
enter data.
‘Well.
Why have you stopped? Keep it up. Many more hours to go.’ Gavin’s words brought
a swift end to the increasingly-unbelievable fantasy taking shape in Jarrod’s
mind and he found himself nodding along in agreement and uttering the words,
‘Yes, sir.’ As his pin-stripe-suited figure confidently strode towards the
nearest exit in pursuit of the latest fifteen minute fix, Jarrod shuddered at
his moment of utter submission and conformity and quickly returned to ‘Document
2’ lurking at the foot of the screen. He added his 58th m-word,
‘more’, perplexed that it had eluded him the previous 57 times, and took a
moment to marvel at the opening line of Moby
Dick (after quickly adding word 59): ‘Call me Ishmael’. A whole lesson had
been spent dwelling on these three words and yet here, when he most needed the
distraction, little more than a moment’s musings sprang from his memory bank.
He shook his head and glanced down at the data before him. There were 21
minutes to go before he could reasonably justify taking a comfort break. 21
minutes of discomfort. It would be a worthwhile challenge.
---------
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