11:19am

Benji

It’s just another report, another meaningless statistic, another assignment to make the sixty minutes in an hour transform into a million. Sentiment analytics have never, and will never, matter to those responsible for compiling the data.

“Whatever,” Benji mumbles to himself. He closes the email and opens up a tab to get started. Benji couldn't care less about this assignment. His mind is solely focused on getting his desk chair to stay at the height he set it. Instead, it slowly lowers throughout the day, another selling point on his quest to quit.

Benji takes his eyes off the screen and looks around his undecorated six foot by four foot work space. He figures he could pack up his stuff and walk out of the building in less than sixty seconds. The cubicle he has been relegated to could fit in any office building anywhere in the world. The walls are high enough to avoid seeing cubicle neighbors but low enough for those passing by to see the computer monitor. Benji hates it.

He thinks to himself about what life could have been had he done something different. It’s the usual thought train when the late morning hits. Coffee has worn off and lunch is on the horizon. This is no time to hunker down and work. The mind has to free itself for just a minute. Or maybe twenty.

But that’s…

“I don’t even know where I’m going with this,” Allen thinks to himself. He puts his pen down from his notebook and looks up from the counter. It’s 11:08 am and no one has come into the bank in forty-five minutes. He thought about Benji again and tried writing something new. It worked for a few seconds but now he lost the story.

Benji is Allen’s new obsession, a character that he feels attached to and can picture a future with. Maybe a great novel or even a series with Benji Komack leading the way.

“I’ve got nothing,” Allen lets loose at a louder than usual decibel. He didn’t mean to say it, he just meant to think it. Now his coworkers are shooting glances at him, wondering what the hell he just said. Anne and Gwen occupy the only other teller stations at the bank and three more personal advisors sit in glass door offices that somehow make the place feel less open and much more depressing. Allen doesn’t care for them, but he doesn’t care about his job, so it’s not personal. When he’s avoiding work and customers, he spends his time jotting down stories on the company-issued notebook he received two months ago. In lieu of a Christmas bonus, he got this notebook.

The bank is small and local, been around for nearly sixty years and people like the old brownstone facade. The last remodel was nine years ago and all the designs are now outdated. Allen’s name tag is constantly slanted because the lopsided Tienken Bank circle logo on the side weighs more than the long and skinny opposite end that looks more like a straw than the lightning bolt it’s supposed to be. The branch manager brought it up once to the President of the bank, but that got nowhere. Allen doesn’t care that it’s slanted, but he doesn’t care about his job, so it’s not top of mind.

How Allen created Benji Komack is unknown even to Allen. He just started writing names one day and that is what the ink put on the paper. Allen likes the name and pictures Benji to be a decently tall, average looking person. It fits the bill for his new idea, which is to have Benji be a low-level marketer stuck doing reports all day long on things like sentiment analysis that no one cares about or will ever read.

Benji has morphed into more than just a character. He is Allen’s mental outlet. A defense mechanism against the aggressive and early onset career depression he is experiencing as a part-time teller at a bank. Envelopes, stamps, old people. Day in and day out. That is Allen's life. He refuses to go full-time since that would be admitting failure of the dream he clings to in order to sleep each night and eat enough to survive. It’s been 13 months since he wrote anything worth reading. Benji is his first spark of anything in a long time. His writing has been flat and the dream has felt further away. Until Benji came along.

Allen lifts his head off his hand and picks up the pen. It’s 11:09am. He spent the last minute dazed and only came back to consciousness because Gwen made another noise at the copier. She has never made a copy of anything without a problem, needing help from whoever makes eye contact with her. It’s become a bit of a parody to Allen. He watches as everyone starts pretending to focus on work as she approaches the machine, hoping to avoid getting called out to help. Everyone hates Gwen.

Back to Benji it is. Allen sighs, reads the last sentence he wrote, and finds words to finish the since abandoned thought.

…But that’s all I can afford, Benji thinks. His boss likes to walk around and make sure everyone is actively doing something. Catching a glimpse of him simultaneously depresses and frightens all the associates, which is a title no one has yet the boss always calls them associates anyway.

The Sentiment Analysis that is glazing over Benji’s eyes is a project the boss gave him because he didn’t want to do it himself. It’s a normal routine for all associates, the boss gets a project, passes it off to one of them, gives no direction or help, and then presents it to the company leadership as his own finished project. For whatever reason, Benji has gotten a lot lately, and the boss comes to his cubicle for a “status report” roughly every 41 minutes. He’s kept a list of time intervals so his friends stop telling him he’s full of shit after work every Thursday evening. They go to Main Street Billiards for a few hours before bar hopping and pretending it’s Friday night and not Thursday. If they get to the bar right after work, happy hour prices are still going, but just barely. Benji loves that. A bucket of cold beers and three to four games of terrible pool, that’s the only heaven Benji knows these days. He daydreams about the 311 steps it takes to get from his cubicle to the foot of the bar. It’s down to a science at this point and he takes pride in knowing those numbers. The thought of clocking out right now has permeated his mind, but not for long.

”Shit,” Benji mumbles as he quickly sits up straight and leans towards the monitor. The boss just turned the corner and saw him slouching. He’s in for it now. The boss hates slouching.

“Komack. Status report hombre.”

The boss likes to shout from 15 yards away while pointing at you with one hand and holding his coffee with the other. He walks and talks like a former high school jock who would tear a hamstring if he ever decides to turn his duck waddle walk into a light jog.

“Getting there, boss. Getting there.”

“You are, are you? Well the status report then Komack, not this ‘getting there’ bullshit. Tell me the status.”

Benji turns towards him.

“I’m analyzing the data and the report will be finished by the end of the day.”

“Your sorry ass has been slouching all day not touching this report. I could have done this in two seconds. But I guess that’s too much for Komack, huh?”

His voice was loud enough for all the associates to hear. Benji knew they were listening because it was dead silent. Not a stroke of the keyboard or a shift in weight could be heard. The boss did this on purpose and Benji knew it.

“Yeah, I’ll get it done.”

“Bet your sorry ass you will.”

Benji turned back to his monitor and said nothing. The boss stood there for a moment but walked away for more associate interrogation. Benji stewed. He was fuming, he…

“HOLY SHHH,” Allen yelled.

Gwen just tapped him on the shoulder because he didn’t hear her calling his name for help.

“I’m so sorry, Allen! I said your name twice, I thought you heard me.”

“No Gwen, I didn’t. But it’s fine. What do you need?”

“I don’t know how to put the three holes on the side of the paper when I print it out even though my copy has three holes. See right here on the side? How do I get it to do that?”

“You have to print it that way, you can’t just copy it that way. Here let me show you at your computer.”

Allen walked over to Gwen’s station and walked her through it. He hit print and she was satisfied. Allen knows she’ll never remember this. She asked him the same question two weeks ago and he figures it will happen again two weeks from now.

He looks over at the clock on the wall. 11:13am. The pen is heavier than it was prior to the heart attack Gwen gave him. He can’t think of what he was going to write next. The thought is gone and it feels like it won’t come back. Allen doesn’t know what to do with this now. He’s got four pages filled in the notebook but the excitement has been lost somewhere in the lines. The whole story feels pointless now and he again thinks the dream is dead and his hopes of leaving the bank are crushed all because he can’t write the next line. Allen sees the signs of the self-destruction he is about to embark on but he has no strength to fight it. He hates his job. He failed. He hates Gwen. But everyone hates Gwen, so it’s not personal. Though it is kind of personal.

A page tears and then three more follow suit. Benji Komack is ripped from the notebook and that’s that. He’s just another thought trapped in a part-time bank teller’s head. Allen isn’t brave enough to stop himself on this train of thought but he is strong enough to tell Gwen to go to hell. No one will care because everyone hates Gwen. Yeah, Allen thinks, that’s justifiable.

He turns to Gwen but catches the clock in the corner of his eye. It’s 11:18am. Allen faces forward without saying a word. He looks at the ripped pages and sighs. He feels more dead than the story of Benji and that story is pretty dead at this point. As that thought overwhelms his mind and the emotions swell, Allen’s chair slowly lowers on its own. 11:19am.