I've measured out my life with coffee spoons

  Where the fuck had it e from?

  A fsh of memory, of him buying the gun, even trying it at the range, burst in his mind, but he k couldn't be memory, because it had never happened. So why did it feel like memory? Well, man, a voice said, what do you call it when you 't tell memory from fantasy? That's right. A psychotic break.

  Shit.

  “Sir, are you there? Hello?”

  The rep on the line sounded like he would know what to do with a mystery gun in his work bag. Gradie took down another series of numbers and got off the call.

  An email chimed in Gradie’s headset, and a notification popped up on the s. Meeting in 15 minutes

  Did they know about the gun? The idea that ma had found out he had a gun and decided the best thing to do was have a meeting, while in some ways realistic, was unlikely. So, what was the meeting about? He was on time today!

  Ten minutes evaporated and the five-minute reminder came up on his s. He spent every sed fanning his shirt, wiping off sweat, and putting his bag in a hundred different pces. Finally, he stuck it itom drawer. It felt like a burial.

  He walked down the aisle of cubicles towards the offi the back wall, trying not to lock eyes with anyone. He ehem, dealing with the same mundane issues as every other day. Rude callers, shitty lunch, ats fucked up by another unit, maybe a write-up. It felt like walking through a po longer meant for him, like dreaming of a house long since sold.

  He promised himself, with about te left of the aisle, that if he got out of this, if he got rid of the gun without getting arrested or fired, he would ge things. He would e into work every day ahe best fug worker in the building, make supervisor in a month and never give anyone a reason to call him into a surprise meeting.

  In the office, his senior manager Holly sat behind a big L shaped desk, his supervisor Matt leaned on a bookshelf, and his team lead Martina sat close enough to touch.

  “Good m Gradie. How are you?” she said.

  “Good, thanks.”

  “Well—”

  “How are you?” he said, before he realized they were moving on.

  “Oh, I’m doing well. It’s Friday, so ’t pin...” She smiled at the room, but dropped it when she looked back at Gradie. He had been trying to remember if it was more on for people to get fired on Fridays.

  “Well, as you know, this meeting is about your performance.” She tinued.

  “Oh—”

  “Did you not see the meeting request? It said performance meeting,” like coaxing a child toward the name of a shape.

  “No, well, I saw the request,” He had stared at the box so long he fot to read it.

  “Oh, ok. Well, before we start, I just want to tell you, you’re not in trouble. This is just a meeting to develop a pn to help you improve.”

  It sounded like a well-worn prayer. He wondered if it had been someo his office who flipped out in a performance meeting. Or someone so far away and so long ago that all that was left of the i olicy of assuring employees they weren’t being terminated as soon as possible. A kind of corporate superstition.

  “So, you think of any distras, anythihat might be affeg your work?” Martina looked at him like he was about to make some grand fession.

  “I don’t know. No.”

  “Are you on your phone?”

  He caught his smile before it was fully formed and tur into a thoughtful grimace.

  “No.” Every single employee was on their phone stantly, from temps to managers. The idea that this wasn’t the case seemed to Gradie to be another one of those managerial superstitions, like the sanctity of stat reports or the righteous pursuit of “e.”

  “Ok,” Holly flipped through some papers. “Do you know what your metrics are for the month, Gradie?”

  He didn’t, but they had printed out the spreadsheet they emailed at the end of every week and ha to him. He had no idea how to decipher it. They helped him.

  “Your productivity month to date is as at sixty-four pert.” Martina pointed out, pen aimed at the highlighted number. “The goal for the team is eighty, and the team average is eighty-three. We would like to see y, ideally, but…”

  It felt like being told you have cer. They were trying to keep everything friendly, but underh it all was a grim uanding. If the numbers don’t improve, you’re outta here.

  “And here is your average time on the phone, colles, ats per hour, average time between ats…”

  For every metric, Matt gave an i reason the number might be down.

  “Looks like you’re taking some time after a call, maybe getting your ogether… You might be holding too long…”

  “Matt’s been giving a lot of things it could be,” Holly said. “But I wanna know what you think it is. What’s keeping you from making stats?”

  He usually hated these meetings, his eure hanging on a razor’s edge in a back offiumbers on a spreadsheet threatening to send him crashing into unemployment and ruin. But today, pared to the fear of being caught with a handgun at work, it was oddly f. O ce to re-live a part of his life he had thought was gone forever. He pyed along.

  “Uh, this neaign—” “The ats have a lot of touches—” “This week has been—” It felt like dang for quarters. Holly saved him.

  “Your metrics have been down for two months now, Gradie.”

  He just looked at her, enjoying the silence.

  “Alright, how about this.” She stacked the papers together in a motion of finality. “Let's go over what we’ve been seeing. Martina?”

  Martina jolted and locked eyes with Gradie. For a moment, it felt like she was the oh her job on the line, asking Gradie for a helping hand. After a quice at Holly, she sat up straight and slipped bato her designated role.

  “Ok, Gradie, sihis neaign rolled out, we’ve been doing some monit, aiced some periods of ina throughout the day.”

  They all looked at him like this was supposed to awaken a realization. The word monit bounced around in his head, trying to find somewhere to stick.

  “Like what?”

  “We’ll, there are times, fifteen seds, or up to five minutes, where you don’t take any a on the at. The cursor doesn’t even move.”

  Another waiting silehat they all expected him to fill somehow. Martina leaned in, trying to look in charge. Holly struggled to keep her eyelids above the midline. Matt looked like he had just turned Gradie in the cops for his own good, but was now wracked with guilt. Gradie just sat there.

  Martina tapped the open page on the desk. A spreadsheet with one dedicated to “inactive time”, the boxes filled with 15s, 45s, 3m28s, and on and on. Gradie preteo study it, and suddenly, the banality of it all reached up and spped him in the fabsp;

  Is this my life now? Justifying myself 15 seds at a time?

  He tensed up, ready t out the door, and remembered the gun. If he quit, would they check his bag? Make sure he wasn’t stealing anything? They let the sileretch, waiting for him.

  Gradie thought about his poems, sketches, direless daydreaming. All the things he had grabbed at like a shipwrecked sailor g at driftwood. All the things that had slipped through his fingers, taken by the current of time. Maybe it was the hours, days, now years, he had spent at this job, or maybe the gun at his desk, waiting like a time bomb to take out everything he was now struggling to preserve. Or maybe he just couldn’t think of another excuse, but his words were something like hoy.

  “Sometimes I just space out.”

  There was another silence. Martina opened her mouth and closed it. Matt shifted on the bookshelf.

  “Space out?” Holly said.

  “Yea, like I just start thinking about something else.”

  “Like what?”

  He had run out of hoy.

  “I don’t know.”

  There was another pause.

  “Well, maybe you o think about whether this is the job for you,” Holly said.

  Gradie managed a nod. Did she realize she was saying that buying groceries and payi might not be his thing?

  “No. I like the job.”

  “Well, Gradie, if that’s the case, we’re going to put you on a thirty-day pn. Martina and Matt are going to monitor your performance, meet with you weekly…”

  They went over it all and Gradie watched them as if from a distanone of it had anything to do with him anymore. If some deity snapped his fingers and sed their job titles, they would act like pletely different people. He pictured Holly leaning up against the bookshelf, slipping him excuses, Matt calling him on his bullshit…

  Suddenly, they were done. Gradie stood up to leave and thought of the gun.

  “Oh, I fot. Something came up. I o leave early today.”

  Holly started to ugh, but caught herself.

  “I’ll have to check the dar,” said Martina.

  Back at his desk, Holly’s words looped in his head. The idea that this job wasn’t “for him” had been so obvious he had never really thought about it. Like most long hidden truths, it was terrifying, and the fear was strangely familiar.

  What's the worst job you've ever had?