by Ryan BENDER-MURPHY

For sev­en­teen days I had been watch­ing Irene, and it was clear now that the pat­tern had been set. 

Every fifty min­utes she would sit at her desk, typ­ing up man­u­als for re­tail and hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­ers based on our clients’ guide­lines. Then, dur­ing the last ten min­utes of every hour, she would stand up and walk out of her room. She would go down the hall­way, past the break room, around the cor­ner, be­yond the re­strooms, past the director’s of­fice, past re­cep­tion, and out­side, where she would trace the perime­ter of the build­ing twice be­fore com­plet­ing the re­verse path. 

On the eigh­teenth day, at eight fifty-one, I in­ter­cept­ed her and said that she need­ed to come to my of­fice. Ini­tial­ly, our con­ver­sa­tion was po­lite, if some­what wood­en, but once we got to the heart of the mat­ter, tem­pers flared: 

“You take too many breaks,” I ex­plained. “You know Michelle’s go­ing to be pissed when she re­al­izes that she’s pay­ing you to walk eighty min­utes a day.” 

“But I do good work!” Irene argued.

“Sort of,” I replied. “You still for­get to write cus­tomers as ‘guests,’ or ‘mem­bers,’ or ‘friends,’ or — well, you get the idea. Al­so, some of the keys for your em­ploy­ee quizzes have the wrong answers.”

“But that hap­pens with every­one!” she rebutted. 

“True,” I ad­mit­ted. “But no­body else is walk­ing an eighth of the day. Why did you start do­ing that, by the way?” 

Irene looked at me grave­ly. “I — I don’t know. I can’t con­cen­trate like I used to; not like I did when I started.” 

“Do you know what will hap­pen if Michelle thinks that we need more work?” I asked, adopt­ing a more somber tone. 

Irene shook her head.

“We’ll have to role­play. Us­ing the man­u­als.”

“Re­al­ly?” There was a warmth in Irene’s voice now. “Act­ing? It’s been so long since I stud­ied the­ater in col­lege… that would be so cool…”

“You’re jok­ing, right? The­ater? In col­lege? Why even go? That’s such a waste of mon­ey. And time. My god.”

“I trav­eled from town to town…” Irene mumbled. 

“Any­way,” I con­tin­ued, “there’s no way in hell I’m go­ing to role­play with these man­u­als, so you need to stop walk­ing around.”

“But… walk­ing helps me think!” Irene protest­ed, once she got out of her daze. 

“Think at your desk.”

“But I need to move!”

“Move at your desk!” I yelled, slam­ming my hand on my desk, as if to demon­strate the point. 

The meet­ing end­ed short­ly thereafter.

Irene’s im­prove­ment wasn’t quick, but over the course of five years, which in­clud­ed many con­ver­sa­tions like the one I have just re­layed, she no longer left her room. There was a time about halfway in­to this change when she would take one-minute breaks each hour, and hon­est­ly, I laughed every time I saw her sprint­ing around the build­ing. Once those stopped, how­ev­er, it was back to busi­ness as usual. 

For­tu­nate­ly, Michelle nev­er caught on to any­thing, and Irene’s work ac­tu­al­ly im­proved. Sure, I lost my voice a few times, but, all in all, things went quite well. 

Lit­tle did I know, how­ev­er, this pe­ri­od of “no walk­ing” would on­ly last six months.

When the breaks did re­turn, they were longer than be­fore, yet Irene’s work was prac­ti­cal­ly flaw­less. Re­al­ly, I want­ed to let this re­lapse slide, but when I saw Michelle poke her head out of her of­fice, track­ing Irene’s move­ments down the hall, I knew that I had to in­ter­vene im­me­di­ate­ly. So, on that very same day, I en­tered Irene’s room as soon as she re­turned to it.

Al­ready seat­ed, she greet­ed me with a “Yes?”

It was at this point that I thought that some­thing was dif­fer­ent about her. Then, when I stepped clos­er, I re­al­ized that Irene was some­one else. 

“…Who are you?” I asked, still over­com­ing my shock. “Where’s Irene?”

“I’m Er­i­ca,” the woman said. “I’m her daughter.”

I stared at her face. The woman in­deed looked like a young Irene.

“Okay,” I replied. “But if your mom’s not here, you can’t be here. And I need to tell my boss.” 

“She’s not com­ing back,” Er­i­ca ex­plained. “But, don’t wor­ry. She told me every­thing. And I mean every­thing.”

“What’s that sup­posed to mean?” I asked, nervously. 

“That I’ll make it like she nev­er left.” Er­i­ca grinned a mo­ment af­ter say­ing this.

“Oh…” I ex­haled. Then I added, “But you’d be get­ting paid un­der her name; that’s fraud.”

“Change it to mine, then,” Er­i­ca sug­gest­ed. “Or do what­ev­er. Fire me, if you have to. Your loss.”

I was slow­ly com­ing to grips with the sit­u­a­tion, but there was still one loose end:

“Where did your mom go?”

“Go means that she has a des­ti­na­tion,” Er­i­ca replied. “Any­way, can I stay?”

I con­sid­ered it. In­ter­view­ing was drea­ry, and train­ing took for­ev­er. And worst of all, both re­quired a hap­py face. 

“Yes, fine,” I replied. “I’ll get the pa­per­work done. But you can’t walk around the build­ing any­more. You need to stay in this room, or else —”

“— I’ll take what­ev­er breaks I need,” Er­i­ca in­ter­ject­ed. “Un­less there’s a prob­lem with the work; then you can fire me. Is there a problem?” 

I re­al­ized then that I couldn’t think of one thing that she had done wrong in the past month. I was scared. 

“No,” I said.

“Ex­act­ly,” was Erica’s con­clud­ing response. 

Need­less to say, the walks con­tin­ued. In fact, they be­came much longer — twen­ty min­utes, thir­ty min­utes — yet the man­u­als were per­fect. Art­ful, even. 

Per­haps Michelle won’t no­tice any­thing, I told my­self, en­ter­tain­ing, for once, the idea that life could be simple. 

How­ev­er, two weeks af­ter dis­cov­er­ing Er­i­ca, I re­ceived an email with a sub­ject that said, “Should we roleplay?” 

I was fucked. 

But I didn’t want to be­lieve it. In­stead, I combed through Erica’s most-re­cent man­u­al, seek­ing just one mis­take that I could rub in her face.

When I re­al­ized that I wouldn’t be able to find any­thing, I scoured old emails and meet­ing notes, search­ing for in­spi­ra­tion in any way that I could get it. Af­ter six hours, I had found — thank­ful­ly — a scrib­bled note in my desk draw­er that gave me enough con­fi­dence to send this re­ply to Michelle:

“No, my peo­ple are busy.”

The note in ques­tion made ref­er­ence to an idea that the sales team once had: they had posit­ed that they could “bag” more clients if they could pitch with spec­u­la­tive man­u­als — that is, man­u­als writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for prospec­tive com­pa­nies. It was a far­fetched idea at the time, giv­en all the slop­py con­tent work, but now it seemed like the per­fect project for Erica. 

The on­ly ques­tion was, how would she take it?

I knew that I had a bit of time be­fore Michelle would bring up role­play­ing again, so I start­ed small. The fol­low­ing day, I as­signed Er­i­ca one spec­u­la­tive man­u­al in ad­di­tion to her cur­rent workload. 

The re­sults were promis­ing. To my sur­prise, she didn’t com­plain about the ex­tra work, and her breaks short­ened by five min­utes per hour. 

The next day, I as­signed her an­oth­er one.

The re­sponse was the same: she had no com­plaints, and her hourly walk de­creased by five min­utes (ten total).

For the rest of the week, then, I kept as­sign­ing her these spec­u­la­tive man­u­als, adding two per day, then three, cu­ri­ous if she would say any­thing, or, once the work stacked up, if she would make a mistake. 

Noth­ing of the sort hap­pened, though. 

In fact, the on­ly change was that, even­tu­al­ly, once I had giv­en her just the right num­ber of as­sign­ments, she no longer went on any walks. 

So, with­out any dra­ma, I kept her work­load steady like this for five years. And it was dur­ing this time that the man­u­als be­came more nec­es­sary than speculative. 

The truth was, busi­ness start­ed boom­ing. And, about halfway in­to this boom, Er­i­ca fig­ured out a way to stream­line in­struc­tions. She al­so cre­at­ed new cus­tomer-en­gage­ment mnemon­ics and de­vised bet­ter em­ploy­ee-per­for­mance acronyms. As a re­sult, we had sev­er­al “mile­stone” par­ties in the break room. The com­pa­ny, too, was pro­filed in dozens of magazines. 

Re­al­ly, every­thing turned out great. So much so that, on the sixth year, when Er­i­ca took over my job, Michelle stopped com­ing in­to the of­fice al­to­geth­er, al­though she still oc­ca­sion­al­ly emailed from wher­ev­er she cur­rent­ly was. When­ev­er she did write, she would al­ways ask the same two questions: 

“How are you do­ing?” And: “What’s been go­ing on?” 

She nev­er men­tioned any­thing about roleplaying. 

Filed under Fiction on March 1st, 2024

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