To Do
John Matthews
Fiction
My Retreat Buddy’s name is Bob.
Bob has worked for InfoDyne for eleven years.
I have never met Bob before coming to Lake Humpal.
I have never, to my knowledge, seen him until this trip even though he works two floors down in Purchasing.
On day one, Lew Grinstead, the Captain Stubing of this ridiculousness, had us pair off. Fifty of us paired off by random number selection. I would have preferred to get my real buddy Tom. Instead, I got Bob.
Buddies on this retreat do exercises together.
They support each other.
Buddies room together.
Our room is in a lodge called Whispering Pines. The walls in the lobby are glazed log. Over the fireplace hangs a painting of the founder of StaySweet Industries, R.L. McNaughton. R.L. is bald. He has black horn rims. His smile is more of a clench.
Inside room 509 there are corporate inspiration photographs. Our central photograph, hanging roughly where the TV should be, is a picture of a snow capped purple mountain. Below it, a caption reads, simply, “Aspire”.
There are no phones here. No TV sets. No laptops.
Instead there are To-Do Lists with StaySweet Industries’ Logo on them. StaySweet is Lew Grinstead’s company. His company is trying to teach our company a thing or two.
I’ve come to realize Bob doesn’t have much in the way of a personality. If it weren’t for the fact that Bob is a rabid Bears fan like myself, I don’t think we’d have anything in common.
It’s the end of day one, a day of bombardment. A psychic assault of Inspiration. I haven’t had one independent thought. It was too much. I am on my bed, trying to read. Bob wants to talk.
Bob is a company man.
Bob is a family man.
I can tell Bob wishes I had a family.
Everything for Bob is family.
“Ever come close?” Bob says.
“To what?” I say.
“To marriage.”
We’ve spent the day, almost all of it, under the tutelage of Grinstead’s sidekick Madeleine Scoville, a colorless minion of StaySweet Industries. Today we spent three hours in a conference room called “The Narrative Room”, where we shared our stories of identity and purpose.
I’m really tired of sharing.
“Not really, Bob,” I say.
Bob is disappointed. He wants desperately for me to have what he has——a comfortable life in the suburbs. He can’t believe I choose to live in the city.
“Don’t you get tired of all the garbage blowing around?” Bob says.
“It’s a fairly clean city these days,” I say, aching to return to my book.
“How about that seminar today?” Bob says.
Since he doesn’t specify which seminar, I have to ask, otherwise I’m rude. This is how passive aggressives have conversations——they force them on others.
“Which one?” I say.
“The one on flowcharting your destiny...”
“Oh, yeah, sure... That was great.”
I light a cigarette because I know it will drive Bob nuts. Maybe he’ll leave.
As soon as I light up, Bob dives for the air conditioner and plants his face next to the vents. I’m not kidding. He watches in horror as the blue/grey smoke wafts around the room. He pretends to study a packet nearby. The room is full of packets. It’s white with packets. Packets the size of those shingles that line the bottom of the Space Shuttle. Packets called “Inventing Desire”. Packets called “The Importance of Brand”.
After I finish the smoke, Bob flaps the bathroom door a bit and announces he’s going to bed. “Good night, Bob,” I say, turning the page.
Things to Do:
Suffocate Bob with pillow.
Day two of the retreat, every department is given “Focus Tasks”. Madeleine Scoville tells us these are “back burner” tasks. We’re not expected to work on them openly, rather let them simmer and ripen.
I work in marketing. One of my tasks is to promote MATHOSAUR, a toy dinosaur that teaches math.
The Mathosaur roams in my head as I walk in the woods.
Being outdoors is nice but unfortunately it’s tainted with team building activities, processes and matrices. Grinstead is a black-eyed puppet. Scoville is a blonde-haired vampire. Together, they are the tag team of self immolation, conspiring to suck individuality out of every blood-filled being.
As I participate in these exercises, I occasionally sneak glances at my coworkers and wonder if any of them are in as much pain as I am. Even my friend Tom seems to have swallowed the hook. And this, someone who has made a good living mastering the manipulation of others.
I have drank beers until dawn with Tom. I have traded sordid college tales. I can’t believe he’s buying into this stuff. Still, for low-level brainwashing, StaySweet knows how to do it right. Much in the tradition of other mind programmers, they don’t allow you any time alone. Time to get perspective and see what a load of shit they’re handing you. They get everyone excited and make it socially unacceptable to not be “part of the team”.
At various points I have fantasies of strangling our CEO, Newt Holler, the one responsible for this. Holler is not at Lake Humpal. Holler is miles away, probably safely tucked away in a Michigan Avenue penthouse doing coke off the chest of some high-priced hooker. Meanwhile, I sit on a stump with a crude tribal instrument, getting my head beat like a drum by a business cult.
Things to Do:
Hang self with bathrobe belt.
That night, it’s me and Bob again.
Bob is so into the program, it freaks me out. Today we had a lecture called “Defining Moment”. We were told that we all wound up here together for a reason. We were told we can trace who we are today (and where we are) to this defining moment. We were asked to think about this and tell everyone our defining moment tomorrow.
“So,” Bob says, “Got yours?”
I’m on page forty-three in my book. No one knows this, but my novel is the only thing keeping me sane right now.
“Got what?” I say.
“Your moment,” Bob says. “Do you know what it is?”
When I first heard this concept of defining moment, I thought immediately about Jim Morrison. His defining moment, it seems to me was when he was a kid vacationing with his family in the New Mexico desert and they saw a car accident——all these indians scattered on dawn’s highway. Morrison said that one of the souls of the suffering, bleeding Indians leaped into his body. A terrific defining moment. But who had shit like that?
I thought for a while and I said, “Bob, I’m still waiting for my dead indian.”
God knows what he made of that.
Day three we start with coffee and donuts then hear a starry-eyed guest speaker named Clive Crump talk about overcoming obstacles for an hour. His words wield some kind of strange metamphetamine power. Everyone around me is ramrod straight in their chair, even Tom.
Close to noon, we are told to get with our Buddy because we are going to journey to the inner sanctum. At the doorway we pick up small Subway sandwiches and water bottles and put them into our backpacks and follow Lew and Madeleine to the Petrified Forest.
The “Petrified Forest” is a bunch of petrified stumps, none of them more than two feet high. They are not majestic. They are not towering. We are supposed to find them inspirational.
Bob is agog. He rubs the rock/trees and says “Wow, imagine how tall this used to be!”
After traipsing through the rocks for an hour, when we finally unpack our lunches, I manage to separate myself from Bob and sidle over to Tom and whisper around my sandwich.
“Jesus,” I say. “I’ve got to get out of here... This shit is driving me nuts...”
Tom nods slightly but he’s cautious about it. Clearly he’s not interested in this kind of talk——not here anyway.
Zip it, his eyes say.
Go with the flow, his eyes say.
Don’t rock the boat.
I try a different tack.
“Game day tomorrow. Packers Bears,” I say. “Hate to miss that.”
But Tom’s not going there. Tom has recently had his first child. Moved into a larger house. There are stakes. He pretends to read a packet called “Learning to Listen”. I get the picture. Eventually I move away.
I move under a tree to be alone. Inside I’m quivering. I’m on the cusp of something. When Bob shows up, I tell him I’m leaving.
“What?”
“I’m going Bob,” I say.
I can tell Bob thinks this is UNWELCOME ACTION. This is UNSCRIPTED.
He blinks a few times, trying to compute this.
“It’s the last day tomorrow anyway,” I say. “No one will care...”
But of course someone will care. Our bosses. Somebody.
But I can’t take another minute. If I have to look at the bland plastic faces of Grinstead and Scoville another second, if I have to hear another word like “brainstorm” or “matrix” I am going to kill someone.
I stand up and pat Bob on the shoulder. I toss my packet to the dirt. I push some branches aside.
Bob comes up behind me. “Where are you going?” he says. His Buddy is going AWOL. This is UNTEAMLIKE.
“It’s Sunday tomorrow,” I say. “Packers Bears. I’m going to a motel, I’m getting drunk and tomorrow I’m finding a tavern and I’m going to watch the Packers lose.”
Bob stands in stunned silence.
“It’s Sunday goddamnit,” I say and I see something flicker in Bob’s eyes.
“Coming?” I say.
Behind the trees, the group is being led in a chant.
Bob hangs back for a second, but only a second.
Then he follows.
