to team
Tai is taking short, slow steps back to the office when he sees across Locust Street an old woman kicking the mulch. There again she kicks it. Two small, uniformed boys flank her, their heads bent down toward the mulch that the woman, probably their grandmother, is kicking. The kicked mulch creates disproportionate clouds of dust.
What Tai sees is someone working a job he wants to work. It beats the job waiting for him at the office, the job of judging whether an employee’s tweeted meme is a fireable offense. Tai feels an odd envy for the dirt kicker as he crosses the street, thinking of how his stepdad always told him to get off the computer and go outside to kick some damn rocks like a kid.
“What’s happening here?” Tai asks. The boys put their pink fists up.
It is now, as the woman turns and the boys begin to kick the mulch with their clean shoes, that Tai realizes the dust from the mulch is not dust. It’s smoke. The ground these people are pounding is smoking. Somewhere in this mulch—although there is no visible flame — lies a fire.
“A cigarette,” the old woman says.
“Is it out?”
“The cigarette is,” she says. “But it caught the ground. You didn’t see it catch?”
“No.”
“It was a whole flame.”
Her accent is unplaceable for Tai, as is his for most people he meets.
“Boys, what did I say? Get back. I do not wish your shoes being dirty.”
“But the ground is on fire!” the one boy says.
“The ground is not on fire, you idiot,” says the other boy. “It’s just on smoke.”
“The ground is smoldering,” Tai says, trying to help, but what does he know of the basic elements of the earth? What Tai knows mostly resides online.
“Don’t encourage them,” she says. “Don’t just come over and encourage these boys.”
“I came by to help with the fire.”
“Then give me your coffee,” she says, so Tai hands over his iced coffee. She immediately whips the contents of the cup at the ground, sprinkling the drops around. The four of them stand and stare at the black, semi-wet mulch. It is too early to tell if they have done an adequate job.
They, Tai thinks, as if he’s joined a team with these boys and this woman, this woman who’s been working here for who knows how long, this woman who could’ve just kept walking her grandsons home. She didn’t have to stop for a brush fire caused by some passing asshole’s Marlboro. She doesn’t have to do anything. They squint and squint at the ground.
“These bushes,” the woman says, cracking a leaf from the holly. “So dry. It could have been a real fire in these bushes.”
“It’s just too early to tell,” Tai says, as the thin pockets of smoke begin again to rise.
“Isn’t it somebody’s job to fix this?” asks one of the boys as his grandmother kicks again at the smoldering mulch. Tai steps back and stands behind her, watching, not at all helping.
“Sometimes things are just everyone’s job,” the woman says. “Sometimes everything is.”
The boys roll their little eyes.
“How do you know when it’s one of those times?” Tai says.
“You’re still here?” the woman says, but Tai isn’t sure that’s true. Is he?
“Listen up now boys. God doesn’t call the qualified — he qualifies the called.”
The listeners nod. The smoke sprouts a flame.
* * * * *
to meme
Gander has been written up for a meme he posted in which a screaming cat serves as a symbol for the employee morale at a certain fashion company which is more or less publicly beloved. The district manager directs Gander to a section of the manual—an appendix updated just last week — called “Private use of Social Media, Acts of Speech, and Brand Reputation.”
Gander argues that the meme wasn’t about the company. “It’s just like … a funny picture.”
“No, it’s just like the write-up has been written. And it’s just like the write-up has been submitted. And the write-up has been printed. Here it is,” the district manager says, shaking the paper. “It’s like I just got off an emergency conference call. We need a corrective action within five business days or else your KPI’s gonna, just like, plummet.”
Gander tries to remember what his KPI is, what the letters mean.
“Listen, Ganz,” the district manager says, turning chummy. “You’ve been given verbal write-ups about your behavior, but this…this is serious. Dude, this is your first written write-up.”
“What’s next, a video write-up? A .gif write-up? Write-up via diss track?” says Gander’s favorite co-worker, Jena, who always makes him laugh, and who’s got the beloved company’s bestselling tote bag on her arm as she enters, an hour late. The tote bag claims to have been made of old tote bags, but Gander knows now that’s a lie. That’s not how they make them anymore.
“You don’t want to know what kind of write-up comes next,” the DM says.
t home, Gander posts a meme in which a cartoon dog wearing a small black bowler hat sips from a mug as his house burns behind him. “My KPI?,” the dog is saying, “It’s fine!” As he waits to see if it earns him any likes, Gander decides that, moving forward, his chief key performance indicator will be shame. How many times a day he feels it.