Crumbs in the Butter

by Alan Keith Parker

They implemented a rigid return-to-work policy on a sickeningly hot summer day when everyone was already sluggish and depressed. Their requirements were strict and unforgiving: five days a week, no flex time, pre-Covid dress codes, hours enforced by analyzing badge-swiping data, a half-hour lunch that kept us confined to a cubicle cluster that smelled like old farts, all while lorded over by middle managers who addressed legitimate concerns about employees’ plummeting morale with corporate double-speak, platitudes, and fake smiles through perfectly even teeth. It was on the seventeenth day of this imprisonment policy that I overheard a manager say that he couldn’t be happier with the new policy because it not only aligned with corporate strategic goals, but also allowed him to have his hands on his people. I stood, brushed crumbs from my skirt, quietly shut my laptop lid, and walked out into the heat wave with my shoulders thrown back. I work remotely now, for less income and fewer benefits, and often have to deal with a stubborn commode in my only bathroom, a moody air conditioner, and a parade of even more stubborn door-to-door salesmen and crumbs in my butter. None of that matters, though, because that manager will never, ever, ever have his hands on me.

6S

Alan Keith Parker writes literary and speculative flash fiction, with stories featured in SciFanSat.com, Six Sentences, 10x10 Flash, Flash Phantoms, and Bruiser Magazine. He’s been publishing short fiction since the 1990s. As a disabled writer, he values opportunities to contribute to inclusive storytelling communities.