Race War

I’ve been closely following the developing race war in the mailroom.I don’t really care about either side of the battle, I’m just thrilled when the humdrum of my daily working life is changed (or is near a sphere of change). For example, on 9/11, I was thrilled. All that death and horror, and I was giggling like a schoolgirl because, Jesus, finally, something was happening.

Life has bored me to tears. This isn’t a recent thing. I’ve been bored since I was a kid. I blame weak parenting, because I learned very early on that your elders will always let you down because they’re feeble and crazy.

Recently, the black manager of the mailroom was demoted to a “coordinator” position. I’m a “coordinator.” It’s a catch-all term for people who have twice as many responsibilities and no increase in pay.

In what I can only call poor planning, the Powers That Be then appointed a white “overseer” (to use the parlance of the mailroom employees) to supervise the mailroom. The former supervisor was moved from his office to a low-wall cubicle on the main floor.

So now that all the black folk are properly out in the field where they belong, being managed by someone who works a few floors away and has a wraparound window office, there’s some ill will developing. This ill will has been ramped up with recent busy work assignments. For example, many departments have been told not to bother labeling their mail. Let the mailroom staff do it! The straw that has broken the back, though, is the best of all – surveillance being conducted on all mailroom staff.

Each floor has security cameras designed to watch us all stand by the elevators and stare up at the ominous black globes. No problem. The mailroom staff, of course, haul ass all over the building delivering our Peets coffee and Amazon rush orders. As part of a recent crackdown, a few mailroom staff members were hauled into an office and asked about their daily habits. Are they visiting other people? Are they dawdling? Are they sticking to their assigned route? Are they using the right elevators and service areas? When answers were not forthcoming, on went a TV in the corner with surveillance footage of each staff member spliced together in a home movie sort of way. Nice. We observed you here at 0900, then here at 0945. Please detail your whereabouts for the missing 45 minutes…

Of course, the security cameras aren’t comprehensive. Use the back stairwell and you can move a giraffe around unobserved. The illusion of security extends to every aspect of our lives. My weekend job, for example, has an exotic house alarm…but only the first floor is wired, and the second floor is only a short climb up the Magnolia tree away.

Using the back stairwell was the excuse provided at that meeting and, now, has become routine. The first step in the race war has begun. Mailroom staff have stepped into the shadows – using the invisible back stairwell exclusively and disguising themselves if they come near cameras.

The theory is that the four or five old guard folks down there are costing the company too much. Fire the people who have worked for 30 years and hire the temps who get paid in peanuts. It is not cost effective, in today’s corporate world, to have longtime, trusted employees.

But if that is the plan, it’s backfiring.  Trying to artificially create disgruntled employees only inspires revolution.

So I sit here now waiting to hear automatic weapons fire in the halls. Take out the cameras first…then kill the white man. Because, really, we’ve gotten away with shocking things for quite some time. On one hand, it’s really fun. On the other, I just know that big darkness soon come. Pun not intended.

For my own part, I never avoid cameras. But I do like to engage them directly. Typically this is in the form of a blank stare, if I’m waiting for something and there’s a camera nearby. Sometimes, if unobserved, I like to get up and really put my face to the lens. In Brampton, a small village in the north of England, I was once waiting three hours for a train. There I just lifted the cameras off their mounts and put them in the woods. But that was a combination of dangerously self destructive boredom and mounting cameras on the footbridge that crossed the tracks. You really need to install cameras to watch the cameras, people! Which my office has done. Thinking of messing with the camera by the elevators? Watch out – there’s another secret camera just down the hall focused on that one. So then is there a third camera watching the watcher and so on? The only realistic solution is to make each lobby area into a hall of mirrors, which is something I’ll suggest to our little slave-overseer liaison committee.