November 21, 2001
  @work

"I SO THIRSTY," the Firecracker declared in the back seat. "I SO THIRSTY I WANT DRINK SOMEBODY BLOOD."

The rest of us paused and looked at her, blankly.

"I SO THIRSTY," she said again.

We accelerated back to the office.

I haven't written about work in a while, and that would be because it's been a bit of a mess. For several weeks, the entire company has been busy moving into the buildings on our side of the street. Part of the bankruptcy deal was that we had to move out of the other half of the campus so that we would no longer have to pay rent on the leases, now severed. Three weeks ago, however, nobody had even a hint that the move was forthcoming. In any event, we presumed it wouldn't impact us, since we were in one of the buildings that the company was going to keep.

Out of perhaps the entire resident body of employees at the Titanic, where I work, it's possible that my group is the only one that has never been moved. At least, not within the last year. Corporate restructuring is a hobby of our upper management, something to do while waiting for the course to free up, or in between visits to the water cooler. Most restructuring usually comes with moves, so that a group can be consolidated into one area; the new home lasts for approximately three months, after which another corporate restructuring takes place, and one is assigned to a completely different group in a completely different department.

Through it all, our group has remained intact and silently glued to our seats, our little ranking of nine cubes -- three now sadly empty -- with only a modicum of shifting through the months. Each person's move, even to the cube next compartment over, costs the company $500. This is an incentive not to do much moving.

Our first indication that we were about to be bushwhacked happened when a pleasant gentleman came wandering by to look at our cubes.

"Nice cube," he said to us, looking thoughtful.

Indian Mom and I glanced at each other. "Can we help you?"

"Sorry," he said, apologetically. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I just wanted to take a look at the cubes we were moving into."

I blinked. Indian Mom blinked. "You're moving into these cubes?" I said, blankly. "Are we still going to be in these cubes when you move?"

He looked surprised. "Hasn't anybody told you that you're moving, yet?"

"When are you moving?" asked Indian Mom, prudently bypassing the question.

"End of the week, maybe?" he guessed. "All I know is, I have to be packed by Friday. They're moving us pretty soon."

He left. We dove over the partition to clamp onto the Manager, and wailed our little story into her ears.

"We're moving?" she echoed, bemused.

She picked up the phone and called her boss, the Puppetmaster. "Oh, I was meaning to tell you," he apparently said. "But don't worry, it won't be for at least two or three weeks."

"It won't be for at least two or three weeks," the Manager told us, helpfully. "We're moving upstairs."

As a group, we trooped upstairs to look at the new cubes we had been assigned.

"Yuck," said I.

"They're dark," said Indian Mom.

"Why are we moving?" asked Indian Woman the Second.

"I like my old cube better," said College Boy.

"THIS CUBE TOO SMALL," said Firecracker.

"Hm," said the Manager, and led our little company back downstairs.

For the rest of the week, the guy moving into our cubes came by to inspect them on a daily basis, sometimes bringing company. Our cubes were pretty choice, after all; they had abundant sunlight, were wide open, had plenty of space, and were quite clean. They kept remarking on the clean part, giving approving looks at the Indian Mom and College Boy and rather pointedly avoiding any glances towards my cube.

On the following Tuesday, they came down again. "When are you moving out?" they asked, worried. "We're supposed to move tomorrow."

Once more, Indian Mom and I climbed over the partition to tackle the Manager. "They say they're moving tomorrow," we wailed. "Are we supposed to move tomorrow? Why didn't anybody tell us we're moving tomorrow? Don't we get boxes?"

"Did you lay us all off and forget to tell us?" I demanded, suspiciously.

The Manager once more picked up the phone and called the Puppetmaster. "Don't be silly," he told her. "I would tell you when you're going to move, and you're not moving for at least a couple more weeks."

"He didn't tell us that we were going to move at all," I said, resentfully. "We found out from this guy who keeps coming around, and for pity's sake, would someone put up a gate so he can't get down here anymore?"

At twelve o'clock the next day, the Manager summoned us into a meeting. "We're moving tomorrow," she sighed. The Puppetmaster had just told her that morning. "They're sending down boxes. We have to be packed and ready to go by the end of the day. They're moving us tomorrow."

I strongly suspect that the way the Manager keeps sane is to smoke some of those ferns on her desk after work and keep inside her head an inpenetrable fortress of Happy, a redoubt that she can crawl into and fend off all alien, unwanted intruders. "Work is work," she's fond of saying with one of her little shrugs. "It's not real life. Why should it bother me?"

It took almost three working days for my computers to be reconnected to the network. The following Wednesday, I was talking to one of the people still remaining on our new floor, who had come by to investigate her new neighbors. "You're sitting there?" she said, interested. "Oh, So-and-so was sitting there before you."

So-and-so is now sitting in my old cube, one floor down.

We gradually determined that we were now sitting in the cubes of the people who had taken over our cubes, one floor below.

"What, exactly, was the point of this exercise?" I demanded the Manager, mildly annoyed.

The Manager shrugged. Inside her head, she crawled back into her fort. "This is the way it is where we work," she sighed.