Fiction

Be right back

Banh mi crumbs fall onto my keyboard – a petri dish of despair, skin flakes and granules of instant coffee unlovingly dispelled from the side of my slack jaw. If Hansel and Gretel were to find the office worker on their lunchbreak, they’d only follow the stale breadcrumbs up the cinderblock lift and find me swathed in my sheets of data and formulas for timesaving and cost-cutting. In this reprieve – where my availability blinks yellow (be right back) like I’m stopped in traffic – I consider the big questions. Why didn’t I study STEM, why didn’t I marry rich, why did Mama spend her super on cruise ships and retirement instead of funding her infant 28-year-old who had ambitions to become a princess, not a fax machine? My bladder pounds as a result of my water-cooler fascinations. Gus from accounts put his dog down but soldiers on for a bonus – Anne in finance is trying a new Zumba class to get rid of her wobblies – and I, ever their acolyte, smile because I know that it will pass the crawling time on my journey between cubicles where I slip in my kitten heels because of a loose patch of carpet that health and safety refuse to fix (they bought us a vending machine instead) where I can see the screens of the so-called productive – Big “data-driven” John is watching horseracing; Elijah the personality hire is hued by the purple glow and possibility of Seek.com – my yellow light, left twitching, blocks any calls from Dino, Marcus, David, who all want something from me – like my father – who I leave on read – at least for lunchtime – where I am harassed outside my window by a billboard for cellulite, a tonic for female rage (get her Dior’s latest gift this Valentine’s), a getaway car backfiring any chance of escape. In 30 minutes you can run five kilometres, cook a simple pasta dish, read a New Yorker profile. The possibilities are endless, but I find myself lost down a rabbit hole on Wikipedia where I land on a niche page about the invention of stockings because I’ve ripped a hole in mine today and curse the arsehole who made them a thing in the first place. Then tragedy – some conspiracy theories – why MH370 was prophesied to happen in a Shakira song – Amelia Earhart was eaten by giant crabs – the network overlords would never block Wikipedia because that’s how our drones find their answers – about our company, its history – they said Facebook, Twitter, Instagram is a waste of our time, but Wikipedia is informative. So I use it to memorise the Gone Girl “Cool Girl” monologue for my upcoming walk and talk with Simon Says. Simon Says eat faster, Simon Says get me the weather report, Simon Says turn that way because at that angle you look like my estranged daughter. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. I print it on my desk and hide it behind a photo of the team at a work dinner where I’ve slowly blotted out my face with lipstick so I look like Bloody Mary. Trying some abstract art, eh? Jessica in her Kmart best always tries to talk to me on my lunchbreak under the guise of natter like a meandering fly – but really she’s asking – why are you wasting time – why would you dare to eat when you could staple the company ethos to your head. Twenty five minutes in and I’ve already got an URGENT request through my virtual letterbox – back in the old days you’d just keep your door shut, leave the mail to pile up – but here you must click it open or someone will do it for you later down the line and throw the email at you like a grenade in an unscheduled one-on-one disguised as a check-in but that is actually an ambush. Wow, talk about this rain and didn’t you see this request I sent on [insert date here]. But I keep on – because I’ve only got 15 – that’s half from where I started – my yellow light – idle – like my body – sunken into the unergonomic chair – slack and stiff – I promised myself – and the girlies who lunch – that I would complete 10,000 steps a day – but I measure mine – 500 – to the toilet and back – where I gave myself pinkeye by trying to cut my bangs with the blunt, communal scissors. I am filled with stale crusts, roast pork, the fumes of Glen’s Cup A Soup and the malfunctioning heater that floods the room with stale air and regret. Whenever I stall from yellow to green – waiting at the precipice of idle to functional – I am tempted to flick my status to red – book a meeting room and stop it all together – pretend I’m training or upskilling – looking busy while trawling LinkedIn for another gilded wage cage – with better benefits, an onsite gym, sleeping quarters, a Netflix allowance, there’s no place like home, unless you can make it work. There’s a Reddit page dedicated to the struggle – r/Auscorp – they ask what everyone’s doing on their lunchbreak as if we are all sitting together in one giant cafeteria like the ones at the hospital where you eat plastic sandwiches while waiting to die. One guy is playing backgammon because he’s been made redundant. One woman eats noodles from a polystyrene cup, the MSG chicken flavour made saltier by her tears. I reply – from my phone, hidden under a branded mousepad (last year’s Christmas gift) – haha eating Banh Mi before a meeting. The Australian dream! I get a few customary smiley faces and replies: the grind never stops before I am forced to open the green eye of labour and progress. Phil calls it the Eye of Sauron – watching over us all. I wipe the crumbs from my face and log back in. Jessica is hungry – hey did you get my email? 😊

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 26, 2025 as "Be right back".

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