The End of an Error

It has been some time since I have written here. I look back at my ninety-plus stories here and wonder what it all will lead to; how far I can go with these ideas and basic brain droppings. There are other pages I contribute to, and I have other responsibilities and ideas in front of me. But I cannot ignore something that has happened recently at my place of work. I cannot just sit here and head into another weekend with papers to mark, laundry to clean and my general routine when I have free time.

No, that will not do at all.

We have lost a colleague.

Now, to be very clear, she did not die from a fatal disease, or even lose her job due to Covid-19 (I happened to lose a contract due to certain restrictions, but that deserves another article...perhaps). She left. Or she was forced to leave. Or it was arranged for her to leave.

Please forgive those last sentences. Even now, after a prolonged absence on her part and her final removal of all items from her desk, I am still not absolutely sure how I should write about her departure. All that I do know is that I came back after our Reading Week break (some might call it Spring Break, but we have our own titles), and her things were gone, including several books, plastic containers containing stationery, food, and other goods that I remember as her own private keepsakes (she once annoyed me and I took a pen from her desk in front of her; her near-conniption impressed me). So, she is gone...and I want to figure things out.

We do not miss her. I saw more than a few bright faces and quick flourishes and dances in our office when it was clear that this final act was her final act. There was no interest in compassion or mercy when we saw that she had left behind a few things that no one wanted and everyone could now jeer at freely (I myself took down one sub-impressionist poster that I could never stand). Only one other staff member felt any compassion for her, and we stopped our celebrations when she appeared.

For me, this new change was very personal.

For one thing, I now had more space in that office.

Let me explain this as well: she took up a desk that was near a series of shelves and she had the keys to two separate filing cabinets. They are now available, and I have already made use of one of them for all the extra papers and documents I have gathered with my work and research. The other staff members egged me on with stories of how this former staffer would control the keys and not let anyone use the space that was available. With my own patience, I never mentioned the crowding out of my desk and the teetering piles of documents that were threatening to crowd out the little space I was given. Now that I could find more space in my work area, I was going to enjoy it.

And why shouldn't I enjoy it? We had shared the same office for more than a decade and never once did I feel I was working with anyone who was more than just a colleague. She was a busybody, snob, hypersensitive (she hated the smell of the coffee I brought to work in the morning; she would have truly hated the machine we bought once she left), talkative to the point of it being the worst kind of fetish, cowardly (she once tried to take part in a slight hazing against me, but only when it was clear that everyone else was involved; at least they were doing it because they liked me), self-righteous (she once bragged at a lunch about being able to 'iron clothes for four hours,' and she expected us to be impressed by this), self-denying (office parties were embarrassing with her around not getting drunk, if you can imagine such a thing), and downright selfish (see my earlier comments on the keys and the space issues).

If this does sound like a hit piece, then I am doing my job. I see no reason to pull my punches over someone whose recent problems are all self-inflicted wounds. The most I could learn about her troubles came from a colleague who told me that she was in some sort of dispute with the head of our school. I did not push things. It was pleasant enough to know that she could actually get in trouble over something and that she was a David facing a very confused Goliath. And then she disappeared.

And then reappeared, but not for our edification. A colleague was there during the Reading Week and saw how she needed to clear out years of materials and other items related to work with the help of the custodial staff. This colleague, along with another new worker (also very happy at this new situation), did not feel any sadness at the loss of an experienced teacher. Instead, they both seemed quite happy (she had already gotten on their bad sides by complaining about their teaching methods; very odd when you have to imagine how she knew about their classes). She came back and took her things under the gaze of no one but a chosen few. I called her a coward for this and said that she was sneaky, which did not earn me any empathy from my manager, but I did not care. I was fed up.

We are all still fed up. I did not even feel much empathy when that other colleague noted that he thought he saw her crying in her car. As I said, everything she had done up to that point was a self-inflicted wound and now she would have to take the time to heal and think about what she did. You could say that we now have a cavity at the centre of our working lives, but all of us are glad to fill it in with light, laughter and an awareness of how much she kept us down with her very presence.

And yet, I still want to know more about her own personal conflicts...

Thank you for reading!

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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