Staring into the abyss of the monitor and it always seemed as though the letters and numbers would spill forth and engulf everything within that very small cubicle. Seemed, but never happened, much to the disappointment of the person occupying that cubicle between the hours required to appear to have completed anything.

It was difficult to see just as to what was being completed, or if the work contributed to anything at all, but when the position was open, they had to jump on it, lest they be out of work for a period far longer than they knew. That had been a while ago and now they had realised that whilst there was very little to do, they still had to appear as though they were busy so as to keep the work and keep the money coming in.

Even then, they were scrutinised for not doing enough – although this was only on the odd occasion – whilst also never being either offered enough, nor given enough when they asked. It wasn’t as though there was work that their employers were refusing to provide; it’s that there wasn’t enough work to go around.

Of course, that was not something that they were complaining about. It afforded them more than enough time to do things that would better their lives outside of the office. If angled carefully, it also allowed them to appear as though they were busy doing their job. However, the more time they were afforded and the more they were able to work on stuff they weren’t paid for, the more they couldn’t shake the feeling that their role and the whole business was providing meaningless, unfulfilling work.

Any day now the monitor would burst open and a whole lot of things would fly on forth. Any day now the papers would fly around and some sort of unexpected event, or series of events would create confusion and panic in the office, and they would revel in it due to a desire for the repetition to be thrown off by something the office would not be able to cope with, for that is what they desired.

However, desire as they might, that would never come and thus they would have to keep on working on trying to appear as though they were working without alerting suspicion. The occasional scrutinising of their work was just as meaningless as the work they were doing. It kind of felt a bit like a reset button. Perhaps it too was a desire to appear as though someone was doing their job by making sure that discipline and order was maintained.

Ultimately it didn’t matter. Everyone there seemed to need to appear to be doing their work, and many of them were good at doing so. However, one person was better than everyone else part of the time, and worse than everyone else part of the time.

And so they stared into their monitor, hoping for something to change, hopeless as that was.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 08:00:46

I think it was possible to fit more into this. It feels like it shouldn’t have ended where it did.

Could have been better.

Written at work.