The Other Box

We were moving the office in the summer. Bartholomew paid a company to move the desks, dividers, and big electronics, but everyone pitched in taking chairs and boxes of supplies up to the fifth floor.

They kept giving me boxes of pens and such, and the men valiantly took reams of paper and encyclopedias. But the problem wasn’t really the weight of the boxes. It was that was no elevator.

Wiping sweat off my forehead, I chucked a small box labeled “staplers” to the new carpet.

“I’m just not sure moving here constitutes best practices,” I gasped.

“Why do you say that?” asked Bartholomew, who was dispensing cold water into a cup. None of my other coworkers took any notice of me.

“You can’t possibly employ someone with mobility issues now, for example. Why didn’t you tell us about this idea before you committed?” I was gradually catching my breath.

“The fire escape out back has ramps,” he tried.

“You’re going to make clients who use wheelchairs go up fire escape ramps? Impressive, but not perhaps in the way you’d like,” I said.

“I’ll meet them at the café downstairs,” he said hesitantly.

This was the most blunt I’d ever been. Perhaps I was finally getting through. But it was too late.

“This place is paid for with the money from the sale of the old one,” said Bartholomew.

How had he managed all this so quickly?

“Everyone knows the top floor is the best.”

I looked at him impotently, wondering if a father with unreasonable expectations had told him that.

“And, hey, we’ve made it. By my count, there’s only one more box. It’s wrapped in plain brown paper, and I left it by the staircase when I couldn’t fit on top of my last stack of boxes without it falling off. It has my two awards in it. Would you be so kind as to bring it up?”

I’d long ago learned not to say the kind of thing I was thinking: They’re your awards, you go get them.

He may have read my mind. “I would do it, but I’ve got a videoconference in two minutes.” He glanced at the time on his phone to drive the point home.

“All right,” I said, stifling a sigh. “See you… soon.”

I wended my way down the stairs in no hurry, wondering if I should stop for a chocolate croissant in the café before heading back up. It wasn’t like my presence was acknowledged in any meaningful way in that office.

The first thing I’d said, on my first day, was that meetings like the one we were currently in decreased productivity significantly. It had been practically proven with hundreds of case studies.

“But it’s the weekly check-in,” Bartholomew had said. “We can’t not have the weekly check-in.”

And so, during the five years I’d worked there, I’d sat through some 260 hours of weekly check-ins, biting back honest requests to be allowed to return to my actual work, and sometimes staying late to make up the time and finish something. Abundant eyerolls were warranted if not welcomed.

His utter lack of critical thinking seemed to have infected me, since I hadn’t looked for a new job where my fresh point of view would be honored. I kept going back to Bartholomew like the zombie he’d been looking to hire.

I made it to the bottom of the stairs, slightly dizzy, so I wondered if I was seeing double for a second. No, there were actually two boxes wrapped in plain brown paper at the foot of the staircase. Bartholomew must’ve forgotten one.

The packages were identical, with no distinguishing marks, and I wondered how my boss remembered where his awards were. There couldn’t possibly be two boxes of awards, and I thought of calling to ask him, but remembered he was in a conference.

I lifted one of the boxes and turned it around in my arms. No marks on it, but the weight and the clunks I made while it turned convinced me it did have the awards in it. I set it aside and regarded the other box.

Its plain brown paper looked more and more mysterious. What could it hold? Did it belong to someone on the first floor of the building? Why had someone placed it there next to an identical box? It could only have been intended to make someone curious, and that someone had turned out to be me.

I went for it. I picked up the mysterious box and turned it around like I had the other one. It was even lighter than the awards box. But the surprise came when I saw something written on the back.

My name.

I ducked into the area behind the staircase, where no one who took the wrong exit out of the café would see me, and tore into the plain brown paper. The box inside hadn’t been sealed, so I flipped the flaps open to reveal an almost empty space with a single sheet of paper.

When I lifted the paper, I noticed a series of keys taped to the cardboard bottom.

The paper had one sentence in florid cursive it took me a moment to decipher:

Welcome to your new life.

I felt called out, conspicuous even in my hiding place.

Below the cursive, there were ten lines of type in a tiny font that looked like addresses around the city.

The keys!

I lifted the tape off each one and slipped them onto my keyring. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket, broke down the box, and left it and its wrapping in the cardboard recycling bin.

Then I scooped up the box with Bartholomew’s awards and huffed up the stairs.

I carry the paper and the keys with me everywhere now. Sometime, when I least expect it, I’ll go to one of those addresses and try the keys.

Somehow, being ignored at work doesn’t bother me anymore.