brady smith had been working for the department of identity consolidation for ten days before he heard someone use the term “bureaucrat” and realized that it applied to him. he vaguely remembered hearing the word before but without knowing or caring what it meant.
“but there is nothing wrong with being a bureaucrat, is there?” he asked emily johnson, his immediate supervisor.
“no, of course not,” emily replied, “it is just that many people would rather be something else.”
vaguely troubled, brady made an appointment to meet with a counselor in the human relations department.
jennifer carter, the counselor, assured brady that there was nothing wrong with being “who he was”, but that if he liked he could seek other opportunities, and she handed him a packet of brochures depicting some of these other options.
brady flipped through the brochures, which described the opportunities and qualifications for being, among other things, rap stars, ballerinas, models, movie producers, homicide detectives, best-selling novelists, talk show hosts, united states senators, hedge fund managers, serial killers, vampires, vampire hunters, drug dealers, drifters who traveled from town to town solving crimes, and several varieties of assassins.
“and all these things are better than being a bureaucrat?” brady asked.
“some people think so,” jennifer replied. “of course, everybody is different and everybody is who they are.”
brady thanked jennifer and left with the brochures.
after work, he went straight home to his apartment, where he was greeted by his cat, who wished to be fed. brady would have preferred a dog, which might have greeted him with more of a show of affection, but the apartment by-laws prohibited it.
he tossed the brochures on to the couch in front of his tv. as he did so, the full force of what he had learned that day hit him like a sledgehammer racing down the track to hell.
he had always thought that people liked him, or at least did not begrudge him his existence.
but now he realized that everybody hated him.
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