[Originally published in Diet Soap #3]

****

As soon as they’ve taken my prints and retinals, the recruiter hands me a portable workscreen.

“PLEASE CHOOSE A HUMOROUS PATOIS.” Underneath it, in smaller letters, “Please note: all patois is in the service of a congenial workplace. Company and subsidiaries are not responsible for actual offense given or taken, and suggest that if this is a concern, you select a patois at random.”

I’m from Germany, and the Standard classes took care of my accent when I was still a kid, but I can see the way the recruiter is looking at me, so I press _Franglais._

Canned laughter and a tinny Marseillaise erupt from the workscreen, and the recruiter smiles and takes it back. “Are you ready to meet your colleagues?”

After a moment I say, “Mais oui.”

#

My cubicle mate chose Cal-Valley Standard as her patois. “Ohmigod,” she says when we shake hands, “you have, like, NO IDEA how much I’m looking forward to working with you! Seriously, like, for real.”

“Me too,” I say, and after the recruiter raises her eyebrows at me, “mon petit chou,” which goes over better.

The guys across from us had their arms replaced with the coder-trunks, forty fingers racing over their keyboards, and when one looks up to greet me he’s got the second eyelid growing already, even though he looks too young for it. Maybe he was recruited early; I remember they came through fifth grade and tested us all and took Amar and Craig with them.

“Hey,” the programmer says, blinks with the translucent membrane.

“No patois?” I ask the recruiter.

She looks at me like I sprouted barnacles out of season. “They’re _skilled_ workers,” she says, and heads down the hall.

I wonder if she’s also considered a skilled worker or if her patois is Bitch Standard.

The Project Managers share a big office with windows that open onto the maze of cubicles, and when the recruiter knocks all three of them look up.

I know they warn you in college that if you sign up for the Project Management degree you’ve made a serious choice, but I thought it was a serious choice in the same way that the Theatre majors were required to pick a playwright’s name for their lower-back tattoos. Now, looking at the Project Managers, I realize why you never see anyone from the PM program again; they’ve all got the same face. It explains what happened to Priscilla.

“These are Bobs,” the recruiter says, and I shake hands with three identically-faced people (one has breasts), wonder how expensive the surgery was, wonder how I’m going to report to the right one unless it’s the one with breasts.

“And your PM is Bob,” says the recruiter, pointing to a fourth person.

There’s a fishbowl mounted on his empty shoulders, and a white spider with two black splotches on its abdomen bum-rushes the glass – it’s like he’s turned his head, it’s like he’s heard us.

“I’m Bob,” he says from somewhere in his chest (the reverb from the glass making his voice tinny), and when he turns in his seat the spider pivots so the eyes stay on me.

“Enchante,” I say, because it’s all I can think of.

He laughs, the spider bouncing inside the bowl. “Finally! Franglais! Man, I’ve been waiting for one of you guys to pick a good one! How’s the office?”

“Fine.”

“Bow-coupe bon, right? Or maybe not? Oh well, say la vee! Come on, I’ll take you to the cafeteria, sign you up. Bridget, thanks so much, he’s great. Great find.”

The recruiter, overcome by the praise, presses the portable screen against her chest. “Thank you, sir.”

The spider salutes her as we head down the hall.

#

At the cafeteria I get to select my signature lunch from a big menu; I pick the same thing as my cubicle mate (macaroni and cheese) so at least it will all smell the same at lunchtime.

I sign the contract that I’ll eat the food at least three times a week and make an effort at least once a week to tease my coworkers about their signature foods, in order to foster an engaging workplace.

Bob chats as if I’m paying attention, and the spider in the bowl leaps sideways against the glass, straining to reach the slices of apple pie that have been marked with name tags. _For Allison. For Bob 1. For Prism._

“Good one,” Bob says when I tick off “mac and cheese”, and sighs. “I’m all bugs, all the time. Need them, of course, but they never smell as good.”

“Right.” I worry about advancement here. “Was that part of a promotion…um, monsieur?”

He shakes his head and the spider rolls around, spots downcast.

#

My cubicle mate is Prism, and she’s been around long enough to qualify for a favorite food _and_ a favorite dessert; when apple pie comes she usually lets me have half.

“It’s totally only fair, right?” she asks, dropping a fork on my desk. “Like, you’d do the same if, y’know.”

I like her. She never reports when I drop my patois (“You’re just out of school,” she says, “that’s totally enough pressure, for real”), and there are moments when I wonder if that actually is what she sounds like.

Once I teased her, handed her a report and said, “It’s, like, totally ready,” and she laughed and said “That’s really congenial of you!” loudly enough that her Bob and my Bob both heard her. Later that day I got a memo with an animated Action Item on it congratulating me for fostering a productive workplace, and I still never figured out if she did that for my benefit or if that was just how she was.
She’s the kind of person who doesn’t take off her shiny bead ring and holiday-specific lapel pins before she leaves, so maybe that’s just her.

At my first review the three real-head Bobs replay footage of me picking my teeth, screen a slideshow called “How Can We Make This More Efficient?” and offer me floss.

At the Q&A I ask, “Mes freres, will Prism and I be working together for a while?”

They frown and pass a copy of the sexual harassment policy to me, and I cover quickly, “Oh, no, uh, pardon moi, it’s just that I’d like to change my signature food but wouldn’t want to offend my work ami.”

After they stop laughing and good-naturedly griping about how all the Franglais people are fickle about food, they take away the harassment manual and give me a menu instead. I pick burgers.

Bob takes me out to celebrate, and we drink Company brand orange soda and Bob talks about all the things waiting for me if I continue to turn in correctly-spelled reports. Whenever he indicates someone the spider swivels, two little black spots surveying the room.

“The synergy here is fantastic. People hit it off in a big way. You’ll like Adamson, the Project Assistant. He’s good people. Much better than the guy before him. That guy gave me this!” He knocks on the glass.

I really, really hope it wasn’t given out at the one-year review. “Um. How?”

“Oh, he poisoned me,” he says, laughing. “Thought he could become Project Manager if I was out of the way. Man, I taught that guy a lesson.”

The spider hoists obediently, the little eye-spots upcurling into a smile.

“And…you kept the spider?”

“Taught her a lesson, too,” he says, and inside the bowl she cringes, tucks the two black eyes underneath her.

#

Prism passes me half her mac and cheese and starts working on her half of my burger. She watches me pick at my food for a moment. Then she says around a bite of burger, “Yo, Franglais, what’s your damage these days?”

I think about the poor spider rattling around in Bob. “Just getting used to the office,” I say. “Plus, I had my review and everything.”

“Oh, I hear it,” she says. “When I got here two years ago I was, like, PETRIFIED all the time, but after a little while you can sort of tell how your Bob wants things and which people don’t mind if you talk about their food or whatever. There’s one guy up in Accounting who, like, totally protested his patois, says he was forced to choose something, and he picked Irish, and now he totally refuses to even use it.” She shakes her head. “He’s a good accountant, but I don’t know.”

I nod, even though I’ve never been up to Accounting. “And I just worry about Bob. My Bob. It just looks so trapped.”

“Look, don’t go talking to anyone else about this,” she says, frowning, twisting her bead ring. “You could get in trouble for questioning your Project Manager, and then it’s four hours of paperwork and that workshop where they send you both to some other department for a day so you can be ignorant together and know what it feels like.”

I can just see Bob walking around the recruiting office, his spider-eyes looking left and right as he tries to take it all in. And what if we’re forgotten up there? Do they make you change your signature food? I’ve been really happy with burgers.

“I’m serious.” Her patois has vanished. “Don’t poke your nose anyplace. You’ve signed the releases. Stay congenial. I mean it.”

“I won’t say anything,” I promise her, and add, “mon cheri” without really thinking about it.

She tries to smile but gives up, sighs, and dumps the rest of her lunch. “Dude. Now I’m riding a major bummer.”

#

I stay late to finish a report. After an hour the company sends an email to make sure everything’s all right and they’re not saddling me with unrealistic performance expectations; I reply with, “No, it’s fine, vraiment!” and a few minutes later another Action Item accolade dances across my screen laughing.

After I make sure everything is spelled correctly I print it out and take it to Bob’s office. The light’s still on, but he’s not there. Turns out he leaves the office behind him when he goes home; the bowl is on his desk with the spider inside, scrabbling at the glass with the look of somebody who knows better than to expect to go anywhere.

I cross the threshold and set the report on Bob’s chair where he’ll see it in the morning.

The spider senses me and backs up to butt me, the two black spots pressed desperately flat to the side of the bowl.

“I know,” I say after a long time. “Good night.”

It turns around, and I get a look at its real eyes, lined up and gleaming like Prism’s bead ring. It presses one front leg to the glass.

I turn out the light.

#

The next day there’s a note in my inbox; I’ve been so impressive with my contributions to a congenial workplace that I’ve qualified for a favorite dessert; it has to be one of three desserts which are most conducive to good-natured workplace teasing, and I must agree to eat it in the cafeteria at least once a week so people can comment on my taste.

I pick the rice pudding.

END