Disclaimer: Well, Annie is mine, but all the others are not. Please don't sue me.
Author's Note: Written during a particularly boring Comparative Civilisations class. Suspend your disbelief from this point on.
Another Nameless Girl
By BJ Garrett
I've worked here since two days after the inauguration. I wear a little tag around my neck that has my clearance stamped on it. I collect coffee cups, recycling boxes, and replace ink cartridges for Donna. I hate my job.
My name is Annie. I love the President, he's a great guy, or so I've been told. I've never met him myself. I assume I could, despite my low status and lack of a graduate degree, say something more intelligent than "I have to pee," if I ever did meet him. I voted for him, and I attempt to be a small cog in the big machine that makes his America work.
God, I hate that analogy. It just doesn't turn my crank. It's Patrice's, she shares my cubicle and does basically the same things I do, except she was hired two weeks before the inauguration. She's got seniority, and she's working on her Master's in Sociology. She told me that she once heard the President speak at Notre Dame, in an address to the graduating class. I don't believe her, she went to Harvard.
I had high hopes, you know, I really did. I wanted to be able to speak, to make a difference. I don't. I'm Hey You, the office girl. I wanted to say more than, "Yes, sir, no, ma'am, right away. You want that in triplicate?" But no. I'm a robot and I can't stand it.
So here I am. I'm standing beside Cathy's desk, waiting for Mr. Seaborn to be not-busy for my appointment. I tried to get in to see Mr. Lyman, but Donna said he was packed tight with doctors, shrinks, and national crises. So I settled. This is the last time I'm going to settle.
Apparently he's done and the door is open. I square my shoulders and stand in the doorway as Cathy tells him his 4:30 is here.
"Hello," he says to me. He doesn't remember me. I'm just another nameless girl who keeps his recycling empty and his coffee cups clean. He's leaning back in his chair, elbows on the armrests, hands folded. He's bored already. "What can I do for you?"
"I work here," I tell him evenly, shutting the door as I enter his office. "My name is--"
"Don't shut the door," he tells me.
"What?"
"Don't shut the door. I shut the door when the door needs to be shut." He's not leaning back anymore, his chair squeaks horrendously.
Slowly, I open the door five or six inches. "Thank you," he says.
"You're welcome," I reply. Claustrophobic much, I say to myself. "May I sit down?"
Looking at me as though I'm insane for asking, he nods. "Yes, sure."
I sit, cross my legs, and put my hands on my knees, clutching my letter. "My name is Annie Wright, Mr. Seaborn. I was hired two days after the inauguration. I'd like to tender my resignation."
He blinks at me. "You should see Josh."
"Mr. Lyman is apparently too busy to see me," I tell him, fingers tightening around the letter.
He wants to get rid of me. He thinks I'm going to sue the White House for some reason. "If you're office staff, you don't resign. You-"
"Quit. I know." I'm not as stupid as he thinks. I do have an Economics degree with a minor in PoliSci. I hate lawyers.
"So why the hullabaloo?" he asks, trying to lighten the mood. If I were anyone else, if I were somebody who had a name to him, I would joke with him about the word 'hullabaloo.' It's an odd word, I must admit. A word that has little place in the West Wing, but a word that fits the situation, oddly. Hence, it is an odd word.
"I wanted to tell somebody why I'm leaving. Quitting, if you must," I reply, my throat closing. I don't want to do this anymore. But I have to. This is my pride.
He leans back again, warily. He thinks I'm going to sue again because I didn't take him up on his joke offer. "Go ahead, then. I don't know why everyone thinks I'm a person you send people to."
This is another joke I understand but do not accept. I push forward. "I'm disappointed."
"You're disappointed? What, the coffee was cold?"
He's using me to relax after something stressful. I'm not a squishy balloon filled with sand. "No, Mr. Seaborn, I'm disappointed with my situation here in the West Wing. I don't think I'm being utilised to my full potential." What a disgusting phrase, but that's what my professor told me would happen if I worked here.
He nods as if he understands. "So you want more responisibility?"
"I want out. I'm quitting." Doesn't he get it?
"Why are you not being potentially utilised?" he asks. I'm tired of this. I'm telling him the words that have been rolling through my head since last Tuesday.
"I walk these halls," I gesture out the window behind me. "I walk these halls that great men and tyrants walked together, and I'm not filled with awe. I'm filled with depression. I'm working in the bastion of freedom and justice, and I know that, but I don't feel it. I've felt more free on tour at Alcatraz than I feel here. I want to be the great man or the tyrant walking here, I want to be the brilliant one, I am the brilliant one, but I want the power, the respect, the dignity of the brilliant one. I want to advise somebody on anything other than what brand of creamer to buy or which paper to use for a Joint Chiefs memo. I want an office. I want to walk with my shoulders straight and my head proud, not stooped and limping like some horrific lab assistant. Igor. I don't want to walk like Igor."
He is surprised. I'm glad. Now he knows that we aren't all happy to wipe the Chosen Ones' feet and wash their coffee cups. He looks out the window at the bustling people, I know he's searching their faces for discontent as they pass. I want to tell him they're too busy doing useless things do be discontent. I want to tell him that until last Tuesday, I was too happy pretending to be stupid to be discontent.
Last Tuesday I tripped and dropped a file at the feet of Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Lyman. I looked up at them, and they looked down at me, past their coffee cups. I know those cups' every chip and bump, every crack, every stain. I realised I had power over their coffee cups. Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Lyman looked at me for a moment and then went back to their conversation. I had rug burn on my knees and hands, and a paper cut on my wrist which hurt like the dickens. I pulled the file back together and started to get up, holding a hand out for assistance. Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Lyman walked away, still arguing about some evil woman. I knelt there for a while, hand out, staring after them, until Patrice came past and grabbed me to gossip about Margaret.
But I'm not going to tell Mr. Seaborn that. It's too humiliating to admit that I was so hurt by such a small thing as a paper cut. So I stare at his loosened tie as he stares out into the hall.
"I once read a speech," he says abruptly. "By a great man, a man destined to be President. He wrote it when he decided to run for Class President after being the Assistant Secretary Treasurer for two years. Of course, he won, I did say he was destined to be President. This particular speech was given to me by a good friend who was trying to convince me to work for this man. It said somewhere that each person is a cog working in a greater machine, but that even cogs can grow, can gain power, and can become the cog that runs the switch of the greater machine. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. I am a cog, and I'm proud to be one--"
I interrupt, saying firmly, "You're a bigger cog than me, and yet my grammar is better."
"Are you saying the cog system isn't fair?" he asks, incredulous.
I balk at affirming this observation. It sounds petulant and whiny to say it's not fair.
He obviously knows this. "I expected a better argument than that," he says reprovingly.
Oh, great, now he's trying to guilt trip me. "I don't have to explain myself to you, Mr. Seaborn. I would be content as a cog with the potential to grow if I didn't have the awful feeling that I don't. Where do office staff go? Nowhere! They go nowhere, that's where. When the President leaves, they're nothing. They can't even work for the new President most of the time. I want to do more in the West Wing than empty recycling bins and wash coffee cups. I have a degree in Economics, not Custodial Studies."
He seems relieved to hear this. And yet shocked. "Empty recycling bins?"
"And wash coffee cups. That's what I do."
"That's it?" His chair squeaks as he straightens suddenly.
"I also replace ink cartridges, photocopy things, and oil chairs."
"That's ridiculous. You're one of the most articulate staff I've met here." I'm not backing down, even when a handsome man compliments me.
"Thank you. I'm still quitting."
He looks around his office. "You'd be a loss." He looks at a loss for something. A mug? A photocopy? Maybe I am needed.
I stand and place the plain white envelope on his desk. He looks at it for a second, then gets out of his chair and starts pacing around the office. "Goodbye, Mr. Seaborn. Please pass my sentiments and my letter on to Mr. Lyman." I walk to the door and open it farther so I can leave. He's obviously forgotten about me. Familiar territory.
At the last moment, I turn to say something else. He's looking at me. I wonder why. I can't remember what I was going to say.
"Work for me," he says.
"You have an assistant," I reply tiredly. I'm not staying. My left foot is out the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Cathy turn and watch us in the doorway.
Pointing at me, he corrects my assumption. "Junior speechwriter."
I point at myself. "Doesn't work here anymore." I point at him. "Crazy."
He laughs. I made the Deputy Director of Communications for the President of the United States laugh. "Please, I need the help."
"Yes, you do, but my degree is, as I mentioned, in Economics, not Psychiatry."
He laughs again. I'm enjoying this laughter.
"I'm a lawyer. I write speeches. So?"
"As I mentioned before, you have terrible grammar."
He grins at me. I smile back. "Stay. Write for me. Better pay, and you can insult my grammar all you want."
I hate making people laugh. I get malleable and content and accept jobs I'm not officially qualified to do, upsetting all my goals for the day. "I'm not a writer." That's it, girl, stick to your guns.
"I'm a lawyer. I believe I've mentioned that. You don't have to be a writer to write." He's trying really hard to convince me now. Why? What makes me so important to the grand scheme of Bartlet's America?
I'm wavering. I resolve not to waver. "Look, Mr. Seaborn, I don't want to--"
Yes, I do.
"Yes, you do."
What the hell. It's too much trouble to go looking for another job. My hand slips from the doorknob. He takes the letter off his desk and holds it up. "You are important," he says quietly. "You're just as important as you want to be. If we didn't need you, we wouldn't have hired you."
And somehow, just because he's standing there after I refused to laugh at his jokes, after laughing at my jokes, just because he's got my letter of quitting in his hand and my mother always said that quitters never win, I say, "Okay."
He grins. He flips the letter into his recycling box and grabs my hand, shaking it vigourously. "We need every literate person we can get up here."
"Yeah," I reply, "there's such a shortage." I don't know if I'm being serious or sarcastic. It doesn't matter right now because neither of us are really listening to each other.
I walk out of the office. Cathy is smiling at me. I realise I'm still smiling. I return to the cubicle. Patrice is waiting there with my favourite spider plant in a half-filled box, which she drops to hug me when she sees my face. "Yay!" she shouts, whirling around with me in her arms.
Spinning like a cog.
THE END
Author's Note: Written during a particularly boring Comparative Civilisations class. Suspend your disbelief from this point on.
Another Nameless Girl
By BJ Garrett
I've worked here since two days after the inauguration. I wear a little tag around my neck that has my clearance stamped on it. I collect coffee cups, recycling boxes, and replace ink cartridges for Donna. I hate my job.
My name is Annie. I love the President, he's a great guy, or so I've been told. I've never met him myself. I assume I could, despite my low status and lack of a graduate degree, say something more intelligent than "I have to pee," if I ever did meet him. I voted for him, and I attempt to be a small cog in the big machine that makes his America work.
God, I hate that analogy. It just doesn't turn my crank. It's Patrice's, she shares my cubicle and does basically the same things I do, except she was hired two weeks before the inauguration. She's got seniority, and she's working on her Master's in Sociology. She told me that she once heard the President speak at Notre Dame, in an address to the graduating class. I don't believe her, she went to Harvard.
I had high hopes, you know, I really did. I wanted to be able to speak, to make a difference. I don't. I'm Hey You, the office girl. I wanted to say more than, "Yes, sir, no, ma'am, right away. You want that in triplicate?" But no. I'm a robot and I can't stand it.
So here I am. I'm standing beside Cathy's desk, waiting for Mr. Seaborn to be not-busy for my appointment. I tried to get in to see Mr. Lyman, but Donna said he was packed tight with doctors, shrinks, and national crises. So I settled. This is the last time I'm going to settle.
Apparently he's done and the door is open. I square my shoulders and stand in the doorway as Cathy tells him his 4:30 is here.
"Hello," he says to me. He doesn't remember me. I'm just another nameless girl who keeps his recycling empty and his coffee cups clean. He's leaning back in his chair, elbows on the armrests, hands folded. He's bored already. "What can I do for you?"
"I work here," I tell him evenly, shutting the door as I enter his office. "My name is--"
"Don't shut the door," he tells me.
"What?"
"Don't shut the door. I shut the door when the door needs to be shut." He's not leaning back anymore, his chair squeaks horrendously.
Slowly, I open the door five or six inches. "Thank you," he says.
"You're welcome," I reply. Claustrophobic much, I say to myself. "May I sit down?"
Looking at me as though I'm insane for asking, he nods. "Yes, sure."
I sit, cross my legs, and put my hands on my knees, clutching my letter. "My name is Annie Wright, Mr. Seaborn. I was hired two days after the inauguration. I'd like to tender my resignation."
He blinks at me. "You should see Josh."
"Mr. Lyman is apparently too busy to see me," I tell him, fingers tightening around the letter.
He wants to get rid of me. He thinks I'm going to sue the White House for some reason. "If you're office staff, you don't resign. You-"
"Quit. I know." I'm not as stupid as he thinks. I do have an Economics degree with a minor in PoliSci. I hate lawyers.
"So why the hullabaloo?" he asks, trying to lighten the mood. If I were anyone else, if I were somebody who had a name to him, I would joke with him about the word 'hullabaloo.' It's an odd word, I must admit. A word that has little place in the West Wing, but a word that fits the situation, oddly. Hence, it is an odd word.
"I wanted to tell somebody why I'm leaving. Quitting, if you must," I reply, my throat closing. I don't want to do this anymore. But I have to. This is my pride.
He leans back again, warily. He thinks I'm going to sue again because I didn't take him up on his joke offer. "Go ahead, then. I don't know why everyone thinks I'm a person you send people to."
This is another joke I understand but do not accept. I push forward. "I'm disappointed."
"You're disappointed? What, the coffee was cold?"
He's using me to relax after something stressful. I'm not a squishy balloon filled with sand. "No, Mr. Seaborn, I'm disappointed with my situation here in the West Wing. I don't think I'm being utilised to my full potential." What a disgusting phrase, but that's what my professor told me would happen if I worked here.
He nods as if he understands. "So you want more responisibility?"
"I want out. I'm quitting." Doesn't he get it?
"Why are you not being potentially utilised?" he asks. I'm tired of this. I'm telling him the words that have been rolling through my head since last Tuesday.
"I walk these halls," I gesture out the window behind me. "I walk these halls that great men and tyrants walked together, and I'm not filled with awe. I'm filled with depression. I'm working in the bastion of freedom and justice, and I know that, but I don't feel it. I've felt more free on tour at Alcatraz than I feel here. I want to be the great man or the tyrant walking here, I want to be the brilliant one, I am the brilliant one, but I want the power, the respect, the dignity of the brilliant one. I want to advise somebody on anything other than what brand of creamer to buy or which paper to use for a Joint Chiefs memo. I want an office. I want to walk with my shoulders straight and my head proud, not stooped and limping like some horrific lab assistant. Igor. I don't want to walk like Igor."
He is surprised. I'm glad. Now he knows that we aren't all happy to wipe the Chosen Ones' feet and wash their coffee cups. He looks out the window at the bustling people, I know he's searching their faces for discontent as they pass. I want to tell him they're too busy doing useless things do be discontent. I want to tell him that until last Tuesday, I was too happy pretending to be stupid to be discontent.
Last Tuesday I tripped and dropped a file at the feet of Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Lyman. I looked up at them, and they looked down at me, past their coffee cups. I know those cups' every chip and bump, every crack, every stain. I realised I had power over their coffee cups. Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Lyman looked at me for a moment and then went back to their conversation. I had rug burn on my knees and hands, and a paper cut on my wrist which hurt like the dickens. I pulled the file back together and started to get up, holding a hand out for assistance. Mr. Ziegler and Mr. Lyman walked away, still arguing about some evil woman. I knelt there for a while, hand out, staring after them, until Patrice came past and grabbed me to gossip about Margaret.
But I'm not going to tell Mr. Seaborn that. It's too humiliating to admit that I was so hurt by such a small thing as a paper cut. So I stare at his loosened tie as he stares out into the hall.
"I once read a speech," he says abruptly. "By a great man, a man destined to be President. He wrote it when he decided to run for Class President after being the Assistant Secretary Treasurer for two years. Of course, he won, I did say he was destined to be President. This particular speech was given to me by a good friend who was trying to convince me to work for this man. It said somewhere that each person is a cog working in a greater machine, but that even cogs can grow, can gain power, and can become the cog that runs the switch of the greater machine. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. I am a cog, and I'm proud to be one--"
I interrupt, saying firmly, "You're a bigger cog than me, and yet my grammar is better."
"Are you saying the cog system isn't fair?" he asks, incredulous.
I balk at affirming this observation. It sounds petulant and whiny to say it's not fair.
He obviously knows this. "I expected a better argument than that," he says reprovingly.
Oh, great, now he's trying to guilt trip me. "I don't have to explain myself to you, Mr. Seaborn. I would be content as a cog with the potential to grow if I didn't have the awful feeling that I don't. Where do office staff go? Nowhere! They go nowhere, that's where. When the President leaves, they're nothing. They can't even work for the new President most of the time. I want to do more in the West Wing than empty recycling bins and wash coffee cups. I have a degree in Economics, not Custodial Studies."
He seems relieved to hear this. And yet shocked. "Empty recycling bins?"
"And wash coffee cups. That's what I do."
"That's it?" His chair squeaks as he straightens suddenly.
"I also replace ink cartridges, photocopy things, and oil chairs."
"That's ridiculous. You're one of the most articulate staff I've met here." I'm not backing down, even when a handsome man compliments me.
"Thank you. I'm still quitting."
He looks around his office. "You'd be a loss." He looks at a loss for something. A mug? A photocopy? Maybe I am needed.
I stand and place the plain white envelope on his desk. He looks at it for a second, then gets out of his chair and starts pacing around the office. "Goodbye, Mr. Seaborn. Please pass my sentiments and my letter on to Mr. Lyman." I walk to the door and open it farther so I can leave. He's obviously forgotten about me. Familiar territory.
At the last moment, I turn to say something else. He's looking at me. I wonder why. I can't remember what I was going to say.
"Work for me," he says.
"You have an assistant," I reply tiredly. I'm not staying. My left foot is out the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Cathy turn and watch us in the doorway.
Pointing at me, he corrects my assumption. "Junior speechwriter."
I point at myself. "Doesn't work here anymore." I point at him. "Crazy."
He laughs. I made the Deputy Director of Communications for the President of the United States laugh. "Please, I need the help."
"Yes, you do, but my degree is, as I mentioned, in Economics, not Psychiatry."
He laughs again. I'm enjoying this laughter.
"I'm a lawyer. I write speeches. So?"
"As I mentioned before, you have terrible grammar."
He grins at me. I smile back. "Stay. Write for me. Better pay, and you can insult my grammar all you want."
I hate making people laugh. I get malleable and content and accept jobs I'm not officially qualified to do, upsetting all my goals for the day. "I'm not a writer." That's it, girl, stick to your guns.
"I'm a lawyer. I believe I've mentioned that. You don't have to be a writer to write." He's trying really hard to convince me now. Why? What makes me so important to the grand scheme of Bartlet's America?
I'm wavering. I resolve not to waver. "Look, Mr. Seaborn, I don't want to--"
Yes, I do.
"Yes, you do."
What the hell. It's too much trouble to go looking for another job. My hand slips from the doorknob. He takes the letter off his desk and holds it up. "You are important," he says quietly. "You're just as important as you want to be. If we didn't need you, we wouldn't have hired you."
And somehow, just because he's standing there after I refused to laugh at his jokes, after laughing at my jokes, just because he's got my letter of quitting in his hand and my mother always said that quitters never win, I say, "Okay."
He grins. He flips the letter into his recycling box and grabs my hand, shaking it vigourously. "We need every literate person we can get up here."
"Yeah," I reply, "there's such a shortage." I don't know if I'm being serious or sarcastic. It doesn't matter right now because neither of us are really listening to each other.
I walk out of the office. Cathy is smiling at me. I realise I'm still smiling. I return to the cubicle. Patrice is waiting there with my favourite spider plant in a half-filled box, which she drops to hug me when she sees my face. "Yay!" she shouts, whirling around with me in her arms.
Spinning like a cog.
THE END