SHORT STORY HUMOUR

The Office Cyborg Affair

I’m a human being. Get me out of here

I should have known something was wrong: she didn’t blink, sweat or exhibit any emotion.

“Your job will be to reduce the high levels of churn while moving the needle positively and making sure we ruthlessly eat our own dog food as you break down silos to make us best in breed.”

Her words were English when you considered them one by one. As to what they meant when strung together remained a mystery. I mentally rearranged them, as you would musical notes, hoping to find a tune. Any tune.

Maria, my new manager, expected an answer. I smiled at her. It seemed polite and, in the circumstances, the only possible response available while I attempted to decipher what she had said. There were references to dogs and breeds, but since we were not a veterinary operation but a telecommunications service provider, this didn’t help.

I hadn’t been sure about applying for this internal job opportunity, but the promotion and pay rise attracted me. The title was Head of Strategic Organisational Change Agency. I liked the Head of too, although what I was now Head of was a tad opaque. I applied anyway. Pay rise, $$$$$$$$$$$$.

I suppose I should have known what I was getting myself into when I read the role requirements:

Manage an impact-driven business line in the implementation of a seamless virtual cloud-based value-add platform providing a digital pre-operative assessment pathway within an MR-driven content plan.

I had re-read the advert several times on the HR site without ever being any the wiser. In the interview I got the distinct impression there hadn’t been too many applicants but I was certain I had the skills they were looking for:

The applicant must be able to demonstrate transparency through the use of a solid framework of organic and inorganic methods and tools providing the fuel for trusted solutions creating an environment to foster innovation and flexibility.

Really, how hard can that be?

Maria was waiting for something more from me than a frozen rictus smile. Her face was as tight as her buttoned-up blouse and jacket. Realising I wasn’t going to say anything any time soon, she continued. “In today’s world, you’re going to have to raise the bar, think outside the box, push the envelope and take things to the next level.”

She squinted, no doubt wondering why she had chosen a gurning fool for this job. My guess she was desperate was probably not too far from the truth.

I nodded, far too enthusiastically, deciding to drop the moronic smile thing. “Yes, I mean no. Bars raised, boxes thought out of.” It was the first thing to fall from my mouth. “Envelopes pushed and levels, erm. Levelled? Taken? Somewhere?” My voice trailed off and my moronic smile returned.

Maria’s eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. She stood still: small, neat and rigid. Her straight brown hair was the shape of a Star Wars storm-trooper helmet. At least it was practical.

“Any questions, my door’s always open for you to run them up the flagpole.” She made a disconcerting scooping movement with one hand to show a flag going up a pole. The corners of her mouth twitched, but her smile program failed. If it had ever been uploaded. “And I’m always glad to take things offline should you choose.”

Take things offline? Was that a sexual innuendo? I suspected not as I doubted her programming contained human emotions. Or proper human language.

“Thank you, Maria,” I said and tried another smile. “But what the hell are you on about?”

I never actually said that last bit. I just wanted to.

Maria walked to the door and turned back. I imagined the RAM accessing her hard drive. Her smooth face creased a moment; I hadn’t thought it possible for her to look more serious than she had up to that point. I was wrong. I waited with a sense of dread, a feeling that proved prescient.

“Irregardless of the fact you’ll need to keep your balls in the air continuously, going forward I want you to lead on a paradigm shift in our value-added business model. Literally.”

Irregardless? Don’t an -ir prefix and a -less suffix cancel each other out? Did she mean regardless or regarding? Or did she not mean anything at all and her language program was based on the use of real and made-up English words selected on shuffle?

The idea of keeping my balls in the air made me queasy, especially having to do it continuously. As for literally, who knows what I had to literally do? I was now doubting the need for this pay rise. Or the Head of title. Literally.

I needed to say something vaguely sensible to get rid of her. “I may check a few things with you once I’ve had a look at the details of the project.” As soon as I’d spoken I knew this was a mistake.

“Great, if you need to reach out, ping me and we can put a pin in it. In the meantime, I know you’ll hit the ground running so get the ball rolling and don’t forget to keep me in the loop.”

I wanted her to go away.

I guessed the only linguistically veracious option was to drudge through the files of the previous role holder to understand what I had to do.

She opened the meeting room door and stopped. “I want to see joined-up thinking and no going off-piste. Look for quick wins with low-hanging fruit. I guess that’s a no-brainer, but I thought I’d put it out there.”

Please leave me.

“I’m passionate and excited about this project so don’t be afraid to get disruptive and leverage our assets with 360-degree thinking. This project has legs and I know you’re going to raise the bar on our customer-centric solutions through efficient synergies.”

Passionate and excited? I can’t say I’d spotted that trait; she had all the emotion of a decommissioned cyborg. I thought I saw her left eye twitch once, but on reflection, it was probably my imagination. Or a glitch in her software.

Maria left me at that point: I think she needed to defrag and undergo a regeneration cycle.

I returned to my desk and opened my predecessor’s computer files. I wondered what had happened to her as I searched for her project files. I found them quickly enough, they were in a folder called: I’m human, get me out of here!

This is an only slightly exaggerated account of a mix of events and people from my overly long career in marketing and business development in multinational corporations.

I can happily report I’m no longer a cyborg.

For more short fiction humour from Alex Markham, take a look at Solar-3: