{"id":17264,"date":"2025-01-23T16:12:49","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T16:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=17264"},"modified":"2025-01-23T16:12:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T16:12:49","slug":"fiction-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/fiction-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiction: Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil went to tea break for the gossip, to find out what was going on, although he screened out the small talk about football and politics. The canteen overlooked the carpark with the smoking shed at the other end \u2013 another good source of information. It was raining the day he heard a replacement boss was coming at the end of the month. She was something new, a bit of an innovator. The rain continued as the men discussed this new woman. Some were dismissive of anyone making a difference. Neil was silent. Sometimes change was a good thing, there was certainly no point in avoiding it. He had joined the organisation five years ago after college and he still daydreamed about the future. Nothing would stop him, he smiled slightly. He had his plans and maybe this new woman would help him.<\/span><\/p>\n

By three thirty the rain had stopped, but the roads were flooded, pooling around the drains in large puddles. It was dark when Neil got on his bike to cycle home and, on the way, he was soaked through by unforgiving passing cars. His mother was in the kitchen boiling potatoes the windows running with condensation.<\/p>\n

\u2018I have a lamb chop for your tea,\u2019 she said accusingly.<\/p>\n

Neil took off his backpack and hung up his wet jacket in the hallway.<\/p>\n

\u2018How\u2019s the captain of industry?\u2019 his father asked amiably as he passed.<\/p>\n

One day Neil thought, they\u2019ll all see. He ate his dinner without comment reading The Evening Herald unenthusiastically and then went to his room. It was his belief that things would change, his life would be transformed. He was certain of it.<\/p>\n

The office was a large room on the third floor. Desks were mainly clustered around the windows with managers discreetly hidden behind wooden framed screens. They were the middle managers; the senior managers had their own offices filled with books and manuals of all kinds. One of them kept a full set of golf clubs leaning against a cupboard under the window while a framed picture of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca hung on the wall. Neil wasn\u2019t even a middle manager; he was an executive assistant which meant he was a nobody. In the afternoons after lunch he let his thoughts wander to his amalgamation project. Imagine consolidating all the programmes and centralising the funding. Think of the savings! He\u2019d done the research, and it was possible. Why had no one thought of it before? It came up at his last annual appraisal. They were in the process of discussing his Key Core Deliverables when he took out his folder with all his ideas and the costings to back them up.<\/p>\n

\u2018That would be a matter for Corporate Affairs,\u2019 his supervisor said primly.<\/p>\n

Neil shouldn\u2019t have expected more from Amanda. She\u2019d been in the job so long she could remember when they\u2019d worked things out on their fingers.<\/p>\n

Down in the pub he complained to his mate Kevin.<\/p>\n

\u2018No one can see the bigger picture,\u2019 Neil said taking a gulp of his pint. \u2018They\u2019re all so busy squirrelling away at their own jobs no one puts their heads above the parapet.<\/p>\n

\u2018Good way to get it shot off,\u2019 Kevin said glumly.<\/p>\n

\u2018What do you mean?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Well if nobody does anything then nobody makes a mistake.\u2019<\/p>\n

Neil had to admit to himself that Kevin was right. He was having doubts about spending much more time in the place anyway. He\u2019d already done two competitions for promotion without success largely because Amanda had commented that he needed to improve. She said he needed more training to bring him up to speed on the organisation\u2019s mission and objectives. It was a polite way of saying he didn\u2019t know his job, but the idea of training wasn\u2019t a bad one and he toyed with it over his ham and cheese sandwich in the canteen. He thought about the training courses he\u2019d done so far in management skills and accountancy. He really needed to get a qualification like a Masters of Business Administration. Meanwhile the replacement manager was due to arrive on Monday. Rumours spread wildly, on the one hand describing her as a ruthless manipulator to a listening ear on the other. Neil decided to wait and see.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend he googled admissions criteria for an MBA. None of the colleges were taking applications until the spring, still it was something to aim for. He took out his C.V. It wasn\u2019t impressive. For the last five years he had been working for Amanda in the same job. It didn\u2019t look good, and HR had blocked his application for a transfer because of his poor performance at his appraisals. On Monday Kevin emailed him:<\/p>\n

\u2018Just met the new boss. Her name is Stella Reynolds, and she has the corner office across the hallway from the D.G.\u2019<\/p>\n

So she was a highflyer, well that could be a good thing.<\/p>\n

Usually Neil didn\u2019t discuss work with his parents. Occasionally his mother asked him if he was happy at the office. It wasn\u2019t a question he asked himself. The job wasn\u2019t about happiness. We\u2019re not here to enjoy ourselves Amanda was fond of saying. He had good days when he got something done and he felt satisfied for a little while. A lot of the time though the days were long and tedious. He was twenty-six and Neil didn\u2019t consider himself young anymore. At this stage he should be getting on with his career, things should be happening! Instead he woke each morning with a heavy feeling of apprehension about the day ahead. He looked at Kevin\u2019s email again and wondered if he was fooling himself thinking there was anything significant in her arrival. At tea break he skipped the canteen and went down to the smoking shed. Kevin was there smoking and drinking a can of Red Bull.<\/p>\n

\u2018Everything OK?\u2019 Neil asked cautiously.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve had enough,\u2019 Kevin blurted out. \u2018I\u2019m going to my brother in New Zealand. He says he can get me a job.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018When are you going?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Next month.\u2019<\/p>\n

So Kevin had found an escape route. Neil was envious, but also felt a surge of energy, now he really had to do something. When he got back to his desk there was a notification about a presentation on Financial Efficiency in the board room on Friday at three. Stella Reynolds was the lead speaker. So this was Neil\u2019s opportunity to meet her. He accessed the slides for the talk and the topics covered coincided with the work he had done on amalgamation. This was it; this was his chance. Kevin once asked him if he believed in God. Neil was so surprised that for a few minutes he didn\u2019t say anything. Then as if it was obvious he said:<\/p>\n

\u2018No I believe in myself.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018But what if you\u2019re not enough,\u2019 Kevin said. \u2018What if you try and try and it\u2019s still not enough.\u2019<\/p>\n

Was that why he was going to New Zealand? Was Kevin looking for God on the other side of the world? It wasn\u2019t true that Neil just believed in himself, he also knew that luck had a large part to play in it. Even the best plan could come asunder if you were unlucky. He thought about Stella Reynolds and looked up her staff details on the HR link. She wore glasses and peered anxiously towards the camera. It wasn\u2019t a good picture. She was probably nervous about having her photo taken. Then he looked at his own staff details. The photo wasn\u2019t too bad, but he was wearing that striped shirt that always made him look like a wide boy. On Friday he would look his best and his most confident. If this plan didn\u2019t work, it wouldn\u2019t be because he didn\u2019t make the effort.<\/p>\n

On Friday morning he left for the house early and noticed that the day was fine and dry. The trees were still bare and wintry, but there was a brightness in the sky that suggested spring. At his desk he took out his folder and went through his spreadsheets again. It wasn\u2019t perfect, but he was sure some of his ideas would work. Then he looked up and saw Amanda was standing beside his desk.<\/p>\n

\u2018Come with me,\u2019 she said tersely.<\/p>\n

He followed her to a large cupboard hidden by a row of filing cabinets at the bottom of the room. She opened the cupboard to reveal a mess of documents lying higgeldy piggeldy on the shelves.<\/p>\n

\u2018These have to be ordered by subject and date then filed away.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018But this will take days.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Have you anything else on hand?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I wanted to go to the presentation.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018This takes precedence.\u2019<\/p>\n

Neil reminded himself that there was nothing to be gained by getting angry and set to work. He tried to work quickly, but the task was more complicated than he realised. By Friday evening he reckoned he was about halfway through. He took a break around four and went down to the smoking shed. Kevin looked up and asked the obvious question:<\/p>\n

\u2018Where were you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Don\u2019t ask.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Let me guess, Amanda. Why not bring your stuff up to Stella Reynolds anyway? You\u2019ve got nothing to lose.<\/p>\n

The two young men sat in silence for a few moments, smoke hung in the air and the light faded gradually as the day ended. They talked about New Zealand and staying in touch. There was a note of sadness in their conversation. Neil finished the filing job although it was difficult to tell if Amanda was happy with it. She was nowhere in sight when he left the room and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. He walked slowly to the corner office, the door was open, he went through. Stella Reynolds smiled at him and said:<\/p>\n

\u2018What can I do for you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve got something to show you,\u2019 Neil said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil went to tea break for the gossip, to find out what was going on, although he screened out the small talk about football and politics. The canteen overlooked the carpark with the smoking shed at the other end \u2013 another good source of information. It was raining the day he heard a replacement boss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1385,1542,2918,2919,2920,2921,3262,3279,6531],"class_list":["post-17264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-cassandra-voices-fiction","tag-change","tag-emer-mullen","tag-emer-mullen-cassandra-voices","tag-emer-mullen-change","tag-emer-mullen-fiction","tag-fiction","tag-fiction-change","tag-new-irish-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}