Personal Days

by Ed Park

  Crease said that his eyelid didn’t flutter when he was at the gym. It kicked in when he waited for the elevator in the morning, anxious and hopeful that HABAW would arrive.

  II (D) ix: Lizzie said she’d been dreaming of sharks again, but that these were friendly sharks, with big happy eyes, or at least not the sorts of sharks that attacked her. This was an improvement over earlier in the year, right around when Jason and the Original Jack were fired, when it seemed that every night she was torn apart, by one shark or two or twenty. Back then, sleep had been like tuning in to a particularly gruesome radio serial.

  This is the worst soup in the world, said Laars.

  Speaking of food, said Lizzie, there’s a banana in the fridge that’s seriously been there since Labor Day.

  II (E): The Jilliad

  II (E) i: In flowing greatcoat and knit black skullcap, with a fat black notebook clamped under his arm, Laars presented a distinctly monklike aspect as he stepped outside on that crisp autumn afternoon.

  He asked the smokers huddled on the pavement for a piece of gum. He’d just gorged on a chicken curry lunch special, chased by some pungent unagi from the day before.

  I have the most amazing breath.

  Pru proffered an Orbit. What’s in the notebook?

  How much time do you have? Smoke escaped from the upright ash stand as he laid out a curious episode against the dying light.

  II (E) ii: Laars explained to those gathered outside that he had just returned from a solo expedition to Siberia—having remembered, as it were, that he’d forgotten to take a stapler the other day. Several weeks had passed since that first journey, and now Siberia was starting to live up to its name. The heat was off, and you could see your breath against the wan light from the windows. The vending machines stood empty and dark. It was so quiet you could hear the clock tick.

  Dust touched everything, as if it had traveled from every corner of the sixth floor to gather around Jill’s desk, a silent pilgrimage. Laars shuddered as he noted the cobwebs now softening the edges. His nape hairs detected a spectral presence and at one point he actually said Jill’s name aloud, half-shutting his eyes in fear of who knows what.

  Alas, Jill’s three staplers were nowhere to be found.

  Most of the old junk had been carted away, and a new heap of things lay in the dumpsterette: five pairs of sunglasses, a disposable camera, and a small bookcase that must have been tucked under her desk.

  The stout dark wood shelves held a dozen titles, books that promised to help you navigate the workplace, negotiate from a position of power, and otherwise claw your way to the top. In other words, titles that would have found their most timid reader in Jill, whose idea of asserting herself at work was answering the phone after the first ring. Each text appeared carefully read—dog-eared and heavily underlined in three different inks. Her microscopic notes clouded the margins, and the endpapers teemed with page numbers and keywords. Her elaborate outlines went beyond the standard markings—Roman numerals, capital letters—and into Greek symbols, decimal places. A flurry of red arrows tied the information together in a swirling, almost three-dimensional mass.

  Laars concluded that Jill, exiled and scared, had been trying—really trying—to get back on track. Not only that: She was determined to advance beyond her previous station. If her fate was to be stuck in an office, she would arm herself with the cutthroat wisdom of sages from Moses to Bill Gates to the guy who invented that new vacuum cleaner. She would study the way of moguls. She would sell out former friends, volunteer for onerous tasks, anything to get a leg up. She would become a winner for maybe the first time in her life.

  Had anyone noticed, toward the end, her confident new haircut, fortified with power highlights, set off by those hypnotic scarlet earrings?

  II (E) iii: Maybe the Sprout had. Maybe he’d read the same books, memorized the same guru-sanctioned moves, and knew—as soon as he saw that overpowering pair of pendulous ear decorations—what was in store: a power play from below. Decisive action was called for, and he ruthlessly cut her loose before she could do any damage.

  II (E) iv: It’s heartbreaking, said Pru as a twister of receipts and Styrofoam take-out containers blew past.

  Seriously, Lizzie agreed.

  That’s what I thought—at first, said Laars. Listen.

  II (E) v: Jill’s spidery handwriting, usually deployed for such pleasantries as thank-you notes and birthday cards, took on an altogether different cast in the margins of these mercenary books. Here it suggested ancient formulae—as if to utter what had been inscribed would unleash a plague of amphibians or a dark unsavory wind.

  Listen.

  He lit a cigarette and continued the account of his expedition.

  On the bottom shelf, hidden under a sheaf of old newspapers, was a spiral notebook. The black cardboard, leathery with age, had gone white along the edges, but the pages were still tight around the spine. Laars opened it under the woozy overhead lighting, holding his breath against the unsettled dust.

  What was this—Jill’s diary?

  There were two or three entries per page, undated, filling most of the book. The handwriting here was bigger, looser, with a slight calligraphic flair. The ink was hard to read at first, somewhere between red and orange but so light it floated, an extract of sunset. The supply cabinet never stocked colors like this.

  II (E) vi: Is this where she wrote down her true feelings about us? asked Pru.

  She seemed nice but she could be a bitch when she wanted to, said Lizzie preemptively.

  I think she secretly hated me, said Crease.

  Laars held up a hand. It’s not what you think it is. He opened the notebook, cleared his throat, and read aloud from the first page:

  This you must know: Your colleagues are your most irreplaceable assets. Treat them like you would the hammer, awl, and clamp in your tool kit.

  —Every Worker’s War Chest, by Fred Glass

  What’s an awl again exactly? asked Lizzie.

  It’s like that pokey thing, said Pru, miming awl usage, or else the shower scene from Psycho.

  II (E) vii: Laars intoned the next entry:

  Don’t be the one who says, I told you so. Tell them so to begin with. Tell them often.

  —Office Politics 101, by Randall Slurry

  II (E) viii: And then the last one on the page:

  Think of the office as an ocean liner. Are you the captain? A passenger? Or the person who plays xylophone for the lido deck band?

  —Climbing the Seven-Rung Ladder: The Business of Business, by Chad Ravioli and Khâder Adipose

  I think I’m the person barfing over the rail, said Pru.

  It’s all too sad if you think about it, said Jack II. It’s depressing to imagine her sitting up there and copying out all that junk.

  II (E) ix: Laars closed the notebook but kept a finger in it. All of the passages came from different books, he explained, but none were from the books Jill had under her desk. This suggested that she drew from an even larger library of ghostwritten CEO memoirs, Machiavellian road maps, and PowerPoint-friendly wealth manuals. Her apartment must have been full to the ceiling with them.

  An army of pigeons rolled across the sky, reversed itself, modified its course yet again, then soared out of sight to the west. What warmth there was to the day had drained completely but no one was quite ready to go inside yet. They began to pass the notebook around, and to absorb what wisdom was entered there.

  II (E) x: Pru read:

  My father used to say that impossible situations require intestinal fortitude. Think about that word: intestinal. Every morning before coming into the office, ask yourself this simple, five-word question: Do I have the guts?

  Much hinges on your answer.

  —The Business Warrior’s 30-Day Mental Fitness Plan (Revised Edition), by Cody Waxing, Founder of MTech Solutions

  II (E) xi: Some eyes rolled.

  Isn’t he that guy who got arrested for embezzlement? said Crease.


  I think it was prostitutes, said Lizzie.

  It was strippers, said Laars.

  Strippers aren’t illegal, said Crease.

  Pru continued:

  Confusion is inevitable. Ride the wave.

  —The Manager’s Bible: The New Memory System for Daily Insights, by Wayne V. Hammer with Juliette Earp

  II (E) xii: Pru took a deep breath.

  Two words, and they might be the most important two words in this book: Document everything. Be terse in e-mails, but let your colleagues—who could turn into your opponents—spill their guts, tell their dirty jokes, whine about this, that, and the other.

  Again with the guts, said Lizzie.

  Be the shoulder they want to cry on, the confidant, the best friend. And every month, make a hard copy of the entire contents of your in-box. Even if something seems insignificant, print it out.

  Maybe you’ll never need to produce this huge stack of evidence. But trust me: You’ll be kicking yourself seven ways to Sunday if it comes down to you and the fool down the hall—and he’s got the goods, and you’ve got squat.

  —How to Win in the Workplace Every Damn Time, by Sue Locke Villareal and Edmund Villareal

  II (E) xiii: The notebook passed to Jack II.

  Got a problem? Put a number to it. Break it down. Do the digits. Give a percentage, a ratio, the odds. You don’t have to be a mathelete—you just have to be smart. If your boss asks you about the weather, don’t just say it’s warm or it’s cold—give the Celsius, the Fahrenheit, the Kelvin if you know it. If you don’t know it, give him a guesstimate. Bottom line: Always use numbers.

  Numbers will also help you think like a pro. Organize your thoughts by numbering every paragraph. Do this for a quick memo the same way you’d do it for an annual report. Outline, quantify, digit-ize.

  The way you number things tells a boss all he needs to know.

  —Three Easy Rules for Impressing the Powers That Be (and Maybe Becoming One Yourself ) (A Simpleton’s™ Guide), by Douglas Salgado and Uri Boris

  II (E) xiv: He wagged a finger.

  Listen up because I’m only going to say this once. I’m in the market for employees who are willing to give me 110 percent.

  You heard me right.

  Most people don’t even have 50 percent to give. Very few can drum up 75. One in a thousand can offer 100 percent, the typical maximum amount. I’m looking for that one person in ten thousand who will give me 110 percent.

  And you know what? I’ve been a student of statistics all my life. I’m going to find that one in ten thousand. And I’m going to hire him. And then I’m going to kick me some ass.

  —Yes, I Drank the Kool-Aid—and I Went Back for Seconds, by M. Halsey Patterson

  II (E) xv: Can I kill myself now? asked Pru.

  Jack II read the next one in a homier but still nostalgia-soaked voice:

  Hell’s bells! We were like kids in a candy store, snapping up properties left and right, renaming them, and squeezing every blessed dollar before throwing them aside. No guts, no glory is one of the oldest clichés, but you have to know that it’s also the only business philosophy I’ve ever found that—hold on to your hats—actually works.

  —Mine for the Taking: or, Some (INCREDIBLY!) Irreverent Notes on the Business of Wealth, by Parker Edwards

  II (E) xvi: It was Lizzie’s turn.

  Waste not time on correspondence; no great wealth ever came of words.

  —Letters to a Young Tycoon, by Percy Ampersand, edited by Percy Ampersand IV

  II (E) xvii:

  Drinking problem? Fuggedaboudit. Drugs? Take a long hike off a short pier. I’m not saying you have to be a teetotaler. But understand that an effective company is all about control, and there’s no place on my ship for people who can’t even control themselves.

  —The Pegasus Plan: How to Get the Job You Want, the Respect You Deserve, and the Employees You Need in Order to Succeed for Life, by D. M. S. Shrapnel, with an introduction by Whittles Langley, CEO of Ptarmigan Group

  II (E) xviii: The streetlamp hummed to life, dousing them in pearlescent light.

  Imagine you’ve just stepped into the elevator with the CEO of your company. Door closes. It’s just the two of you.

  What are you going to say?

  You need to put across your present responsibilities, recent triumphs, and personal goals. And you need to do it in a way that makes it clear how your objectives mesh with the company’s.

  Think of the Elevator Speech as a 30-second sound bite. An advertisement—for yourself.

  The Sprout is totally into Elevator Speeches, said Lizzie. Have you noticed?

  Except I think he’s misinterpreting the concept, said Pru. He’ll draw all these bogus analogies between the upward movement of the elevator and the upward movement of the company.

  Crease continued:

  Every employee—never mind how high or how low—should have his or her Elevator Speech ready. Why not practice it in front of a mirror? Don’t throw away an opportunity to shine.

  —Are You Going Up or Going Down? Learn How to Sell Yourself Every Time, by Dobbs Redondo

  II (E) xix:

  I don’t care about the bottom line. Let me repeat that: I don’t care about the bottom line. No CEO with a brain in his head and (excuse me, ladies) a set of bona fide cojones gives a rat’s ass (pardon my French) about the bottom line. Once you start thinking about it, you’re finished.

  Done.

  Toast.

  Your enemies will eat you alive—and not even bother finishing the meal.

  —Give Me a Break Already: An Inside Man Thinks Outside the Box, by Thomas Feeley with Moss Jervins

  Toast! said Lizzie. We should show this to Jules!

  II (E) xx: Crease read the last entry for the day, a puzzling one indeed:

  If your boss is in the way, get a new boss. This obviously doesn’t mean you have to jump ship and send that CV out into the big bad world. No. Getting a new boss can be as simple as making your current boss change—to conform to your needs. Show him who’s in charge. Answer every question—and each time, make sure you ask one of your own. If you can co-opt the information flow, channel it to do your bidding, you can put him in a position where he can’t help but depend on you. Hey presto: Your job has become more secure than his.

  —Real Advice You Can Take to the Bank, by Rhona Chen, with an introduction by Gordon G. Knott

  Cheers, said Grime, who had just stepped out for a smoke. What’s all this then?

  II (E) xxi: Something changed over the course of the public reading. Though the gems of hard-won wisdom made them laugh, at a certain point they weren’t really laughing at Jill anymore.

  Something clicked. She wasn’t a gullible follower of those mandates and routines, some rube from West Virginia or was it regular Virginia trying to turn herself into a soulless, win-at-any-cost shark. She was taking a buzz saw to the rules, pointing out the absurd contradictions, the glib b.s. of corporate culture.

  That no one suspected Jill had this side to her made the whole thing a sort of modern cautionary tale, or myth, or something. Pru was still working on the wording.

  Laars took back the notebook. He’d removed his gloves to light another cigarette, and with his bare fingers he could feel something on the blank black cover, something he hadn’t noticed before: deep grooves done with dead ballpoint, marks in the shapes of letters. As he tilted the notebook toward the light from the streetlamp, the title was revealed:

  THE JILLIAD

  II (E) xxii: Soon they were all in love with The Jilliad. It became an obsession: the encyclopedia of their despair, a catalog of futility written by someone they thought they knew well but in fact did not know at all. Jill had been the artist in exile, the anonymous, merciless genius of the sixth floor.

  She’s my hero, said Jenny.

  It’s working for me on all these different levels, said Pru. She and Lizzie had a feminist take on it, and Grime claimed he did, too.

  In on
e afternoon Jill went from grade-A milquetoast to ironic literary master. In an e-mail that read like a press release, Pru called her a deadpan poet of devastating wit who revives the lost art of quotation.

  II (E) xxiii: Lizzie tried to reach Jill but nothing worked. Her cell phone number was out of service. No home phone could be found. Lizzie even tried calling directory assistance in Jill’s hometown, hoping to locate her parents, to no avail.

  The author was a ghost.

  II (E) xxiv: The manuscript was unstable. There were exactly 322 excerpts in The Jilliad, most just a few lines long, a handful of them overrunning a page. For a stretch in the middle, Jill switched to a delicate pencil, as if tracing the letters straight from her source books. Sometimes she skipped pages, or started an entry close to the bottom of a blank one. Was that significant? The organization had its own logic, its own rhythm. She adorned later entries with amusing caricatures of salarymen in severe suits, exuding tadpoles of sweat as they waved calculators in the air and pointed at pie charts. The bosses in these sketches resembled the Sprout of the future, with a potbelly and nose hair. In the corner one could generally find a fretful female employee drawn at a quarter of the scale, dutifully taking notes while having a nervous breakdown. This was likely a Jill figure.

  Crease was in charge of making photocopies of The Jilliad for everyone, but the machine was having trouble reading the unusual ink. So Lizzie kept the notebook in her desk for safekeeping, and the rest of them took turns borrowing it from her, transcribing a page or two each time. The idea was to merge all the finished pieces into one master file, which they could then annotate, print, e-mail, and otherwise control.