"The Lottery Winner" (excerpt #2)

Michael sat down to his desk approximately ninety-seven minutes late. A post-it note was attached to his monitor. “M- Please see me. T-” T stood for Tom which stood for boss. He crumpled up the note, took a final sip of his coffee, and made his way down the hall. He didn’t have to knock, for Tom’s door was always open. He knew this not only from passing the door every morning, but because Tom made a point of telling his employees on a weekly basis that his “door was always open.” Michael suspected he meant it more literally than figuratively.

“Hey, Tom.”
Tom, on the phone, motioned with one hand for Michael to come in and sit.

As Tom talked to (by all accounts) a prospective client about a particular project that apparently could be done “without reinventing the wheel,” Michael became increasingly concerned that he was just sitting there doing nothing. Should he stare out the window? Should he adjust his posture every few seconds? Should he pretend he was in on the telephone conversation and nod accordingly? Should he shut his eyes? No, he definitely should not shut his eyes.
“Thanks, Bill.”

Tom hung up the phone, and shut the screen on his laptop.
“Michael.” He folded his hands in front of him. “How is everything?”

Michael wasn’t sure if this was a work question or a personal question. Should he quickly list the status of the projects he’s supposedly working on, or should he talk about his hangover, loneliness, lack of ambition and general ambivalence etc…?

“Things are good.”
“Well after last night, you’re probably the only one at the office who feels good.”
“Yeah, things got pretty…crazy.”
Tom stood up. “Hang on.”
He walked over to the door and shut it closed. “Let’s chat.”

It was then that Michael knew that this would be the last conversation they would ever have.

Michael was acutely self-aware that he was putting his personal effects into a cardboard box. He thought they only did that in the movies. Yet even the most tired clichés are still based somewhat on truth, and the truth was that a box was the very best way to quickly and gracefully make an exit from a job he was sorry to lose but wasn’t quite sure why. All he needed to complete the stereotype was a potted plant and a framed picture. But really, in the box he just had lots of pens.

“Budget cuts,” Bossman had told him. He said a lot more, but Michael wasn’t really listening. He knew ultimately it was a personality issue, or lack thereof. He didn’t leave his firing in a huff. He left his firing in a “huh.” And that reaction reaffirmed Tom’s reason decision for Michael’s termination. Bossman Tom sprinted around the office hopped up on professional stress. Employeeman Michael sauntered around the office slowly on sighs. He refused to feel guilty for leaving work at 6pm (the end of the work day, mind you), and Tom could never understand that. He could never understand why Michael didn’t care about “important” clients that make cheap body spray or why he wasn’t thrilled to work on getting kids to eat more of an “important” client’s latest fruit drink. To Tom, a client was a client was a client, no matter what. To Michael, most of them were simply tragic figures.

Michael could really be an asshole.