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For the last four months, I’ve been stationed at an insurance company deep in the heart of Scarborough or “ScarTown”, as it is fondly dubbed by the local gangs. Along with a SWAT team of consultants, I have been here for months. We are a special forces unit closely modeled after the US Army’s Delta Force with no exit plan and no hope of liberation or self-governance in the form of democracy. So in fact, exactly like the US Army.

Sadly, we are without snipers and rifles so killing yourself is limited to slitting your wrists with nicked off razor blades found lying in the alley behind the plaza. There’s a Mandarin restaurant in the same building that we share with the office.

Everyday at around 9:13 AM, I park my car at the back lot and enter the loading dock entrance behind the Mandarin restaurant. I walk through probably the most disgusting smell that has ever faced mankind and won. I tend to hold my breath when I walk by, but sometimes a gust of wind knocks me back by surprise. Generally, it gets worst as the day goes on.

As I pass by the gutted chickens, hanging pigs, and buckets of murky water, I acknowledge the peripheral stares from my Asian brethren. Squatting over chopping blocks in befouled aprons and smeared smocks, they glance up at me briefly and I return the looks: Yes, you too could wear a suit one day, I think quietly to them. Free yourselves from this mini-market of rotting flesh! Join the ranks of Deloitte consultants!

Through the sterile corridors, there are beams of white fluorescent lights fixed on the ceilings that lead the way to our windowless room. Here, we sit side-by-side in filings of cubicles. Rows of grey, fuzzy-walled cubicles; enough to seat 50 medium to large sized adults.

I sit at the end of the row of cubicles in the hallway near the entrance. My desk juts out at the end of the row of all cubicles, asymmetrical with no match or twin. A small laser printer sits atop a table beside my desk and two milk crates lay on the floor carrying packs of white paper (presumably for the printer).

I spliced the network cable, attached a switch and pulled another network cable to my laptop to give myself Internet. I have no phone, nor even dignity as it remains outside in the summer sun, smiling and laughing at me while I squeeze into my desk. There is no wall surrounding the desk, so it doesn’t really count as a cubicle — its more just a desk in the middle of the room loosely attached to a cubicle row.

I greet people as they walk through the door. I also take messages for my manager who sits next to me. Sometimes I leave notes on his Post-It™ Notes sticky pad. On Mondays and Wednesdays, he hangs his gym towel to dry on a hanger next to my desk drawer. It’s usually damp.

I have learned to frown when I sit there in my hallway desk scowling as dark as a thunder cloud. I’ve learned this well as I’ve tired of the smiles, waves and taps on the shoulders from passers-by. Most people are able to deftly avoid my desk by a sidestep to the left as they come through the door and proceed to their own desk.

I’ve tallied up the total hours that I’ve spent in small talk and chit-chat with people wandering or waiting or needing information and it amounted to approximately 5 years of my life.

Often people ask me for directions to the washroom as though there were a giant sign above my desk that read, “Information”. I look up above my desk to check everyday, just to make sure.

There have been times that I’ve given serious thought to bringing in a monkey and an organ. Perhaps more to amuse myself than anything else.

One day, a Dell computer workstation appeared on my desk. My desk! A desk no one else wanted and yet there it was, a computer waiting to be turned on had found its way to my desk.

I hid behind the file cabinet for a week, waiting to see who it would be that would appear at my desk. How dare they take the one thing I had? Violating my home, as easily as one would move their shit into another man’s space. Was I to move to the furnace room next and have my stapler confiscated?

No one appeared.

I waited, situating myself in concealment, and still no one appeared. Its entirely possible that I may have blacked out for brief intervals.

I went back to my desk and moved the workstation to the floor, piled the milk crates on top of each other, fashioned a bridge, and moved the 17″ monitor over slightly to be my second monitor. I felt like a hobo collecting unwanted goods and turning them into my own treasure.

This carried on for another few weeks until today.

Today, a giant Xerox printer appeared. I left for two hours to a meeting and returned to find a 4′x5′x2′ all-purpose scanner/copier/printer/coffee maker directly in front of my desk. As people began using the printer, I breathed in the fresh, warm toner only to see my dead grandma dancing in front of me. Cheap highs and condensed quarters were not included in the job description.

I am hoping tomorrow, they bring in the large “Kinko’s” sign and when I show up, there will be a freshly pressed Kinko’s uniform waiting for me. At least, I won’t have to spend $1500 on another suit.

“Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room” – Winston Churchill