Another Day at the Office

Others Stories | Mar 9, 2012 | 12 min read
32 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Others Stories

Another Day at the Office

Jonathan kicked the front door of Aspen Health open and made his way past the empty security desk in the main lobby then started down the long hallway that led to the call center floor. He thought that it was a little odd that the scrawny, Barney Fife-like security guard named Richard wasn't at his post as usual, but considering the fact that he was carrying a firearm in each hand he wasn't too upset that he wasn't there. Richard was a huge dork and was about as intimidating as a newborn kitten but Jonathan had no desire to kill him. Unlike most of the other people who worked there Richard was a pretty nice guy and didn't deserve to die.

Jonathan had hated working there from the very beginning and just somehow knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was going to be absolutely miserable during his time there. He regretted his decision to take the job as soon as he walked in the building the first day he started working there, but since his unemployment benefits were running out very shortly and he had no other potential employers beating on his door begging him to work for them he really didn't have any choice in the matter. He had bills that he had to pay and since being homeless didn't sound like a whole lot of fun to him he bit the bullet and took the only job that was offered to him even thought he'd heard nothing but bad things about the place.

Aspen Health was one of those companies that thought that it was a lot more important than it actually was. It sold health care products to stores all across the country and even though all of the supervisors, managers, and other higher ups claimed that the products that the company sold could often be the deciding factor between life and death for some unfortunate patient the only items Jonathan ever sold were along the line of your usual over the counter items such as aspirins, tampons, and laxatives. Unless there was some poor woman somewhere that had a very bad headache, was losing gallons of blood while on her period and was battling the worst case of constipation ever recorded in the history of human existence all at the same time Jonathan had his doubts that any of their products could ever save anyone's life.

Even though he had a Bachelor's in Communications (a degree that was as useful as tits on a doorknob) he was hired on as a lowly customer service representative even though he'd applied for a supervisor position (which the chirpy, borderline annoying woman who'd interviewed him assured him he would most likely get due to the fact that he had a degree). The job he ended up with consisted of him spending his entire shift talking to complete idiots and rude, condescending assholes, pricks, and just hateful pieces of shit in general who would call in to place orders, set up returns, and just be the biggest pain in the ass that they could possibly be. Most of them were in the wrong field and should have worked for the government as he discovered that the vast majority of them could take the smallest and simplest of issues and somehow turn it into a complicated mess that ended up confusing everyone involved.

He usually talked to pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, and the majority of them couldn't count to three without a substantial amount of help from someone else (he once had to explain to a store's head pharmacist that twelve tablets were less than twenty-four tablets several times before she understood). After realizing how stupid most of the people who worked in pharmacies were he made a point to always check his prescriptions that he got filled at the drug store in town to make sure that they were the right pills as apparently there had been countless cases where a pharmacist or tech gave someone the wrong thing. Before he worked there he had always been under the impression that pharmacists were highly intelligent people, but after having to deal with them on a daily basis he started to believe otherwise.

His fellow co-workers weren't much better either, and there were times that it seemed like he worked in a circus freak show instead of a pharmaceutical and medical supply company.

Over half of the supervisors that worked there were borderline mentally retarded and he was pretty certain that the only reason that they had their jobs was because the company was required to have a certain number of people with lower functioning mental capabilities around to keep the state labor board satisfied when it came to being a workplace that offered equal opportunities to everyone.

His immediate supervisor had an IQ that was somewhere in the 14-20 range and had worked for years as a Wal-Mart door greeter before being hired on at Aspen in a position that allowed him to be in charge of others. He was a high school dropout that finally got his GED after a handful of failed attempts so it made perfect sense that he would have a college graduate like Jonathan working under him.

Jonathan only liked a few people that he worked with and even some of them got on his nerves at times. Since the building was located in a poor area of town dominated by a population made up of crack heads, wannabe gang members, and just skuzzy, skanky people in general the company decided that it would be a good idea to employ such people, and since Jonathan hadn't been arrested countless times, wasn't a drug addict, or didn't knock up three or four different girls when he was in high school he had a difficult time to relating to any of his co-workers.

There were some real winners there and some of them really stood out for a variety of reasons. There was a fat, disgusting women who was always talking about her time of the month in gruesome detail or informing others about the frequency of her bowel movements and if they were solid, wet, and what color they were. During break every day he would see a woman who tried to talk and act like she was African American even though she was as white as the pure driven snow that was always screaming at someone on her cell phone, and some poor son-of-a-bitch that looked like the lovechild of Gary Busey and Howdy Doody that always smelled like he had just shit his pants (in his defense though he always had a nice, fat,  juicy booger in his nose that most likely hampered his sense of smell) .  There was also some white trash woman who chain smoked one cigarette after the other (and as a result sounded like "Froggy" from The Little Rascals) that was constantly pregnant. She popped kids out like a Pez dispenser did candy and since she smoked like a freight train with each pregnancy it was no big shock to anyone that none of her 500 kids were normal. There was a rumor that since her boyfriend was in prison for the next thirty years for armed robbery that there was no one around to make her stop smoking when she was with child. In short there was an assortment of oddballs and weirdos that Jonathan worked alongside with each day, and there wasn't a carnival sideshow anywhere on earth that could boast as many strange creatures as Aspen Health.

He hurried down the hall and sprinted by the conference room where he'd been told just last week that someone other than himself was getting the promotion that he'd applied for. It was a training assistant position and due to his past experience as a teaching assistant in college and the fact that he was an educated person he was certain that he would get it. He seemed to have impressed the shit out of the guy that had interviewed him (who was a plump little fellow with a red face and bleach blonde hair that made him look like Ric Flair in his later years) and he was pretty confident that the job would be offered to him since he was most likely the most qualified person for it out of all the current employees who wanted it so they could escape the Hell that was customer service.

It wasn't until a few days later that the same man that had interviewed him had him meet back up with him in the conference room to let him know that they were going with another applicant and that he didn't get the promotion. He told Jonathan that he lacked "corporate experience (which basically meant that he didn't kiss enough ass around the workplace)" and to add insult to injury he made the comment that he needed to brush up on his interviewing skills. The man then graciously offered to provide him with some tips that would ensure that he would interview better in the future and seemed genuinely shocked when Jonathan basically just go up and walked out of the room without saying a word, using all of his self control to keep from telling him to go fuck himself.

He found out later that day that the promotion went to Gil, a weaselly little bastard who spent all of his time at work kissing the asses of everyone in upper management and ratting out his fellow employees when they made the slightest mistake or were a few minutes late coming back from break. He'd been hired months after Jonathan and seemed to have the intelligence of an eggplant but since he had an aunt who had worked for the company for several years that had a lot of say when he came to who got hired and who didn't most people really weren't surprised when they heard that he got the promotion over the other people who wanted it. The moment that Jonathan heard the news he decided then and there that he was going to shoot the place up and then turn the gun on himself.

He took a deep breath and asked himself if he really wanted to go through with it before he opened the door that would take him into the call center area. After debating the issue for a couple of minutes he decided that he was doing the right thing and kicked the door open, ready to unleash death and destruction on anyone unlucky enough to get in his way.

He stepped through the door expecting to find the usual bunch of poor bastards sitting in their cubicles talking to a variety of assholes that worked in pharmacies across the country but what he saw instead stopped him dead in his tracks. His jaw literally dropped and he came close to dropping both of his weapons to the floor as well. He couldn't quite believe what he was seeing and everything seemed so surreal that he was tempted to pinch himself to make sure that he wasn't still at home in bed dreaming the whole thing.

There was blood all over the walls and various body parts scattered throughout the call center floor. He saw dead bodies everywhere he looked, some of them shot in the back, some in the head, and even a few that had taken a few bullets to the face. The entire room looked like a war zone or the set of a 1980's slasher flick and even though he always took pride in the fact that he had a pretty strong stomach he came very close to throwing up as he looked at the carnage all around him. Seeing the dead bodies made him come to his senses and he realized that no matter how much he hated the place and the people he worked with that he would never, ever be able to carry out his plans of killing all of them.

He heard the sound of crying and saw a couple of people huddled together under a desk trying desperately to hide. He took a step toward them when he heard the gun shot and felt a burning pain in his right shoulder that made him lose his grip on the gun he was carrying. He went down on one knee and dropped his other weapon as well. He grabbed his shoulder where he'd been shot and felt relieved when he saw that the bullet had only grazed him and hadn't injured him as badly as it could have. A computer monitor exploded behind him and as the unseen assailant took another shot at him so he dove to the floor and tried to stay as low as possible as he crawled toward the safety of a cubicle to avoid having his head blown off.

When he reached the cube he got under the desk and sat there for a moment trying to figure out what he was going to do. He finally worked up the nerve to raise his head and take a peek to see where (and who) the  person with the gun was and caught a glimpse of Herman walking in his direction with a shot gun. They locked eyes for a split second and Jonathan saw his lips curl into a slight smile as he raised the weapon and aimed it at him. He ducked down just a second before Herman pulled the trigger and a smiling ceramic frog sitting on the desk behind him holding a sign that said "Is it Friday yet?" took the shot that was intended for his head, blowing it to pieces.

Herman was one of those people that no one ever seemed to notice. He was very quiet (its always the quiet ones) and kept to himself. Jonathan had run into him in the restroom and break room on a number of occasions and other than speaking and making small talk about the weather and other subjects they never had an in-depth conversation. He always seemed like a nice enough guy and Jonathan never thought of him as the type to go on a workplace killing spree.

Jonathan stayed under the desk and tried to come up with some sort of plan that would allow him to escape without being shot numerous times in the face.   He could hear Herman coming his way so he reached up and grabbed a letter opener off the desk and wished that he hadn't dropped both of his guns. He lay in wait with the letter opener clutched in his hand and waited for Herman to come closer, telling himself over and over again that he was going to make it out alive even though he couldn't help but have serious doubts about his chances of survival.

"It didn't have to be this way! You all brought this on yourselves! You made me do it!' Herman shouted, sounding like he was on the verge of breaking down into tears.

Jonathan wanted to stand up and tell him that he could relate to what he was feeling but since Herman sounded crazy as a shit house rat he decided that it wasn't the best of ideas. He saw the woman who was always screaming at whoever it was on her cell phone scurry out from under a desk and make a break for the door only to be shot in the back of the head before she even reached it, painting the wall with her brains.

"I bet none of you pretentious cocksuckers are laughing at me now are you?" Herman roared as he walked past the cubicle that Jonathan was hiding in.

Without even thinking and just letting his instincts guide him Jonathan stabbed him in the top of the foot with the letter opener. He screamed in agony as the blade sunk through his cheap low-top Chuck Taylor rip-off he was wearing and turned it from white to red. He dropped the shot gun, making it go off and nearly deafening Jonathan it was so close to him. Herman went down on his knee and tried in vain to pull the letter opener out of his foot and making himself vulnerable in the process. Jonathan took advantage of the situation and kicked him as hard as he could in the face, making him fall back on the floor.

With almost superhuman speed Jonathan pulled the letter opener out of Herman's foot and was on top of him in an instant. He put all of his weight on top of him and pinned him to the ground with the point of the letter opener pressed against his Adam's apple.

"What are you waiting for? Do it!" Herman ordered with tears running down his face.

Jonathan paused for a moment and tried to decide what to do. He wanted to tell Herman that he understood why he'd done what he'd done. He wanted to reach out to him and let him know that he could relate to him. He wanted to tell him that he wasn't alone and that they were kindred spirits. He wanted to tell him a lot of things but he never got the chance as he saw him reaching for his shot gun out of the corner of his eye and reacted by stabbing Herman in the throat. Jonathan didn't know for sure, but he thought he saw Herman smile at him for a brief second right before he died.

He sat there for a while letting everything sink in and started to get up when he heard the sound of clapping behind him. He turned around and saw the Ric Flair-looking guy who had interviewed him standing there with a look of relief on his face (and a wet spot on the front of his khaki dress pants as he'd apparently pissed himself recently in response to Herman's rampage).

"Thank you, Jeremy! Thank you so much!" he exclaimed, trying his best to hug Jonathan who pushed him away.

"My name is Jonathan, not Jeremy."

"I knew there was something just not quite right about that creepy son-of-a-biscuit eater," the man said, totally ignoring the fact that Jonathan had corrected him. "I had heard so many people talk about how he creeped them out. Did you know anything about him, Jeremy?"

Jonathan answered his question by picking up Herman's shot gun off the floor and shooting the man in the chest with it. The blast sent him flying backward and he ended up landing on top of the dead body of a woman named Whitney that Jonathan had seen sniffing White Out from time to time so she could get a cheap buzz.

He heard movement across the room and turned to see one of the 750 unnecessary vice- presidents that the company had (this guy's title was Vice-President of Hubcaps or Pop-Tarts or something equally ludicrous that Jonathan couldn't remember at the moment) standing there with his mouth gaped open in shock. He was a big fat slob of a man that looked like a live action version of Barney Rubble and he was a total asshole to everyone who worked under him. He started backing up slowly and begging for his life when Jonathan pointed the shot gun at him but it didn't do him any good. He squeezed the trigger with a smile on his face and couldn't help but laugh when the blast totally obliterated the man's face and head.

He heard the sound of sirens approaching as he looked down at Herman's body and felt a wave of sadness wash over him.

"I'm sorry Herman, I shouldn't have stopped you." He whispered before he aimed his weapon toward the door of the call center area and waited for the first wave of police officers and paramedics to arrive, ready and willing to go down in a blaze of glory.

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Reviews

Todd Martin Mar 10, 2012

Thanks, I am glad you enjoyed it!

L.A. Camp Mar 10, 2012

Good story and taps right into the fear of anyone who works in a big company who ignores the little guy. My only one piece of negativity and this is minor is sometimes the opinions of Jonathan were almost like statements/opinions of the writer, like it wa

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