Saint of Whales - Chapter III

“And where do you think you’re going?” 

Karlo Bunjac’s voice cut through the air and stopped Saint in his tracks. His manager’s voice recalled the sound of a bear trap more than a man. Each word echoed in Saint’s mind and he knew by the time they faded, Bunjac would be on him like shit on a blanket. With only a few seconds’ reprieve remaining, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and hung onto the peace and quiet while he had it. 

“Do you know what time it is?” 

Saint clenched his jaw and took one more breath before turning around. He knew dealing with Bunjac to be the risk of trying to take back some of his time. Every second counted to his manager, and every second counted to the dreaded HR department. Submitting an incorrect timesheet—that is, to say, one that favoured the employee—was time fraud; nevermind, of course, the weekly workload outweighed the number of hours in a workday with the only way to complete the work being to work on one’s own time without compensation. So, of course, Saint knew he shouldn’t be leaving early, but he also knew he shouldn’t be at his desk beyond his allotted hours without correlating compensation. He didn’t, however, have the nerve to argue with his manager or with the dreaded HR, nor did he have the resiliency to advocate for himself either. At the end of the day, he would deal with the headache and his balls being broken and having to parrot back how important it was to be at his desk until the end of his shift and how he understood the need for structure and rules, especially in the insurance industry. 

“Are you in there, Kinfail? Can you hear me?” 

After another breath and a slow blink, Saint gave a light wave with his right hand, straining to lengthen out his middle finger as best he could, though the nerve damage he suffered at birth precluded that from happening. While he could rest easily in knowing he flipped off his manager as best he could, it didn’t really have much to do with the price of fish. He would have given just about anything to actually be able to move his middle, ring, and pinkie finger rather than only his thumb and index finger.

“Hey Karlo. Yeah I’m really sorry. I... I guess my mind was just on autopil—”

“You know we don’t pay you for leaving, Kinfail. You do know that, right?” 

Saint forced a smile to fight back a pained expression. The only people he knew who got paid to leave were the C-Suite, but that was a different story and he knew better. 

“You d-”

“I just had my head in the clouds. I know how important it is to be at my desk for my whole shift.”

Karlo furrowed his brow for a minute, clearly trying to evaluate the words coming towards him. When trying to play the manager, it was important not to play oneself and Saint was coming dangerously close to doing just that. However, it appeared the strategy worked, as his manager shifted side to side on his feet a little bit. In some ways, the man moved the way a boxer might move when stunned by an unexpected jab in the opening round. 

“If you know it’s important, why did you try and leave early then?”

As if needed for emphasis, Karlo raised his wrist up to look at his bright yellow sport watch and flashed the big digital face to Saint, showing him he’d dared attempt escape from his desk three minutes before four-thirty. “I like you, Saint, so I’m not going to write you up on this, but you know what leaving early is, right? It’s called time fra—”

“I know, I know,” Saint interrupted, dropping his gaze to his feet. “Time fraud. I know, KB. I’m really sorry. I really just had my head in the clouds. I swear it won’t happen again.” He added a dejected sigh, hoping he could somehow convey how contrite his manager wanted him to feel. He was never much of an actor—never much of anything in the arts—so it was all a crapshoot. He generally didn’t think of himself as having much capital in the office, though he was quiet by nature, deflected praise, and kept his mouth shut. He hoped those characteristics would be noticed in the background operations of Karlo’s thought process. Saint squeezed his right index finger and thumb together, trying to distract himself from the clicking of his manager biting on his own fingernails, a sign the man was deep in thought. He wasn’t really sure what to make of the development because in the five years he’d known Karlo, he never knew the man to be much of a thinker, either before or after making a decision. 

After a long inhale and a snorting exhale, Karlo folded his across across his barrel chest. “Listen, Saint. I like you as much as I like any of our staff here, and I don’t want to see you get in trouble,” he started. “So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to go to the washroom and when I walk back to my office I’m going to you see at your desk wrapping up for the day. How does that sound?” 

To Saint, how it sounded was they were going to continue engaging in pointless theatre and scratching Karlo’s itch for control. Whatever the case was and whatever Saint’s feelings might be, he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Debating the dynamic wasn’t worth his time or energy. “That sounds good, KB. Thank you. I really appreciate it. This won’t happen again.” 

The answer drew a sharp nod and Karlo jabbed his thumb backwards towards the cubicle farm and Saint started back to his desk. He held his breath as he walked, knowing Karlo had turned to watch him and would be listening keenly for any sound of discontent. Saint knew his manager to be of the mind that anyone working in the office ought to be grateful and thankful for the job, ready to offer up praise and thanks and amens for the opportunity to push never-ending piles of paper from one side of the desk to the other. In a lot of ways, the endless grind didn’t matter. Saint wasn’t one to have any great desires or grand plans anyway. The paycheque was the paycheque and so long as he could pay his rent and keep food in his fridge and clothes on his back, maybe it wasn’t so bad. 

He turned to his left and entered into his cubicle, throwing his gloves onto his desk before sliding his jacket off and hanging it on the back of his chair. He sat down and turned on his computer and monitor. The dull tone startup tone rang out, and Saint heard Karlo start plodding to the washroom. As the computer finished powering up, Saint tapped away at the keyboard with the fingers of his left hand and the index finger of his right hand to log in. Once logged in, he held the mouse in his right hand and double-clicked on the icon to fire up the outdated data entry program. He knew he would be stuck at his desk until Karlo came back, and he didn’t know how long the man would take in the washroom. He could be in there for five minutes, he could be in there for twenty. 

“He caught you on the way out, huh?”

Saint turned around and smiled weakly at Harmony Yip. He liked Harmony. She was always kind to him, though, like many in the office, she stayed at arm’s length. He didn’t expect friendship in the workplace, and had never been under the impression colleagues ought to be friends simply by virtue of working together. Of course, maybe the reason he never had those relationships was because he didn’t make much of an attempt to build them. Whatever the case might have been, he liked Harmony and appreciated her checking in on him. 

“Yeah, I was trying to get out a couple of minutes early and didn’t check the washroom first. I should have done that. I know better than to leave before he’s gone in there,” Saint said, watching Harmony nod in solidarity. It wasn’t all that long ago when she ended up finding herself working a bundle of overtime on a project of which Karlo had underestimated the scope and for which he’d misallocated resources. The time she spent trying to correct his mistakes had far exceeded the fifteen minutes she’d tried to shave off her day.

“Don’t worry, Saint,” Harmony said, reaching in and squeezing his right shoulder, “we all run onto the wrong side of him every now and then. Just make sure you keep your shit in a pile for the next bit and he’ll be onto someone else. But make sure you have your shit in a pile, because he’s going to be going through everything for the next minute to try and rub your face in it. Trust me.” She flashed another smile, showing off her bright white, almost impossibly straight teeth. Saint didn’t find himself attracted to many people—anyone, really—though he had to admit Harmony held a fascinating quality with her richly coloured skin, wide dark eyes and broad features. 

“Thanks for the advice, Harmony. You’d better escape while you can though. You know he’ll try and pin you here if he catches you after shift,” Saint offered. He enjoyed talking with Harmony, but he always preferred the quiet over conversation and she seemed to pick up on that, flashing him a quick smile and a wave and walking away from his cubicle. 

With silence restored to his desk area, Saint settled into his chair and drummed on the desktop with his left fingers. He sighed lowly, knowing he only needed to put on the facade of working until Karlo came back. What mattered were the optics of a situation, and a willingness to play the game. At the end of the day, it was all theatre anyway. Intention didn’t matter, and actions mattered less. The place wouldn’t change because it couldn’t change. 

Saint sighed and opened a claim document from the shared network, followed by the claim in his computer system. Some his coworkers hated their jobs, hated the work they did, and he understood it. After all, it wasn’t like anyone in data entry had an exciting job or dealt with exciting situations. More often than not, the data they entered would be used as leverage against the people filing the insurance claim, denying coverage for urgent medical treatment abroad or putting severe restrictions on what type of services could be received and, often more seriously, determining what services couldn’t be received. The common result of the data entry work was the weight of debt thrust upon folk whose only crime was one of misfortune: breaking a leg while skiing, eating undercooked pork on a camping trip, contracting hepatitis A at a resort, the gall to become sick a second time. None of it truly sat right with Saint, but for a man with little passion in life, change did not come easily. Even picturing a new reality was difficult to do and sometimes it wasn’t worth the headache or the longing yielded by such an effort. Often, Saint just wanted to drift away into imagination, whether it be a comic book or a video game, a musical, or the drama of sport.

Karlo’s heavy footsteps alerted Saint of the man’s impending arrival, and Saint slipped a paper into his pinch grip on his right hand with all his fingers, raising the document up to take a look at it: a billing statement from the radiology department at a hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona. He didn’t have much time to look at the invoice, as Karlo came around the corner, and Saint turned in his seat to greet him. 

“Hey, Karlo. You know, I really have to thank you for catching me at the door. I think this invoice is one that’s really important I get entered in tonight so the claims team can have it for tomorrow.”

The comment yielded a patronizing sneer, with his lips pursing up at the right corner and whose underlying cruelty couldn’t be missed. Karlo Bunjac’s greatest pleasure came through the stroking of his ego. The quality made him the perfect middle manager, one who gladly tormented his staff over the smallest of things in exchange for table scraps and a pat on the head. Like a poorly trained dog, he associated vague praise as his having been a good boy. 

Karlo set his right hand on his hip, and wagged his left pointer finger at Saint. “See, Kinfail? There’s reasons we have our shifts the way they are and it isn’t because I’m an asshole. I don’t make you work your whole shift because I’m an asshole. Attention to detail is important. You know that. Cost containment is how we stay in business.”

Saint couldn’t help but notice the man’s boots on his feet, the parka he wore, along with the mittens on his hands, and the toque on his head. From what Saint understood, Karlo’s office hours were until five, and his state of dress certainly gave the indication he was ready to leave early. Saint bit his tongue, trying his best not to clench his jaw or flare his nostrils or blink too much, take too deep a breath, or anything else that might give Karlo cause to get further up his shirt. The hypocrisy bothered him, but highlighting the double standard would only fall back on him and, just like Harmony told him, he would be targeted for a variety of things—punctuality down to the second, dress code to his socks and shoelaces, how often he took a shit—until someone else vexed his manager. Instead of advocating for himself, he would let his manager piss on his foot and comment about the rain. 

“Yeah no, I understand,” Saint said. “Look, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to just stay a little later and finish this entry up. I don’t think it’ll take me any longer than another ten or fifteen minutes.”

The request yielded more self-satisfied nodding, with Karlo’s pursed lips shifting from right to centre, pushing his sneer into a  smirk. “Yes, I’ll let you stay a little late,” he said, tipping back on his heels and rubbing his belly with both hands. “Don’t even think about putting it on your timesheet though. We don’t authorize overtime, and don’t forget I caught you trying to sneak out early. You make it up now and you’ll be back in the good books tomorrow. Be sure to send me that case and I’ll check over your work and make sure it’s up to snuff.” He looked down at his watch and back up to Saint. “Now, I have to catch the train or I won’t get home until later than I want. Don’t forget to e-mail me the case number.” Without pleasantry, Karlo turned round and waddled towards the elevator.

Saint turned around in his own chair and held his breath until he heard the ding of the elevator arriving, the sliding of the elevator doors opening and then closing. After a slow count to five, Saint let out a long sigh and allowed himself to smack his desk with his right hand. He wished he could just have a little bit of backbone and a little bit of guts. At the end of the day, he knew he had a steady, if unexciting, job that kept a roof over his head, the lights on, and food in his fridge. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and he knew he shouldn’t complain too much. As much as he wanted something to be a different way, it wasn’t a different way.