This scene might be your ultimate fantasy or a sign of an impending burnout.
Friday emails. Torturous, aren’t they? They’re leeches, sucking every last drop out of you before the weekend comes to burn them off. I hope you’re well, they say but don’t mean. Below those meaningless syllables is a laundry list of questions and demands. I need this before you log off. The client needs this before Monday afternoon. There’s a change of plan, and the deadline has been pushed up. By the way, did you manage to start on that new project? How’s that going?
But this Friday is different because it’s my last. Although I’m the only one who knows it. I read the lines without the usual fire igniting my chest. I’m free, freer than I’ve ever been. Okay, maybe that’s not quite true. The clock’s still ticking, crawling its way to six. It might be my last Friday, but I’m not one to abandon my post before the time I said I would. It’s a matter of standards, standards all the Friday afternoon emailers don’t share. My phone is buzzing on the table next to me. It’s my boss chasing answers. But it’s five fifty-nine, and her words will consume a minute like it's a crumb stuck to her napkin, so I let it ring.
It’s six now, and I can't remember when I was this happy. Maybe the time I thought I was going to Disneyland before I found out I wasn’t. She’s calling again, and I can almost feel her seething on the other end. There’s little she hates more than people letting her calls ring out. Perhaps she’s even cursing me down the line. She has done that before; about a month ago, I had taken my time picking up her call, and when I did, she was mid-tirade. Like a woman made of wires and microchips, she switched from fucking lazy bitch, to Hello sweety! How are you doing? Maybe she’s a robot or at the very least, a cyborg. It would explain everything apart from her incompetence. There're few things worse than being degraded by someone who’s noticeably terrible at their job. Anyway, she’s in the past now, and so are the rest of them. The screen of my company laptop resists my hand when I try to close it. One last act of defiance. It’s old, and its joints are stiff. But that doesn’t matter anymore. Today it can retire. I don't put much thought into it, but I stand up with the laptop in my hands, walk over to the window, open it and throw it out. A second passes as it falls... then it shatters, spraying pieces of its motherboard across the concrete. I imagine all the rude, impatient and demanding emails scatter with it and smile.
“Have a nice weekend,” I say and for once I mean it.
Have a nice weekend (I always mean it), Luke