All Smoke And No Fire

As I knocked on the door of my boss's office for what I believed the last time I couldn't help but be conscious about the thick layer of sweat on my body.

"Please come in." My boss had always been very courteous and friendly.

I almost stumbled to the chair across from where he was seated at his table. He looked at me with a beaming smile. I don't know how long I stared back at him but it felt like I was seeing him for the first time. He was leaning back in his bed-like chair. Dressed in his typical white shirt and light brown pants he wore his dusty grey hair in a ruffled manner.

"I heard you wanted to talk to me about something?" He tried to break the awkward silence.

As if woken out of a trance I hastily pushed the piece of paper I was holding towards him. It slid smoothly across the table and came to a stop in front of him. At the time at least it felt like a confident and defiant gesture to me.

He read through the paper faster than I had imagined. I was hoping that I would get some time to calm my nerves while he read through why I had decided to quit. He looked up at me without any shock or anger on his face. I was surprised.

"So I guess this is the part where we talk about this huh? And I will be doing my best to retain you. You know that. Why don't you go first? Tell me why you want to leave us." He said, almost with a huge grin on his face as if he was welcoming me to the company.

I readily jumped into the speech I had prepared.
"It all started a few years ago - "

"Yes I am listening." He interrupted.

"- I was going through some rough time, just like a lot of my peers at the time were. Before that year I would have never imagined myself doing this work but I think something inside me snapped that year. My friend introduced me and I liked how the work we do here made me feel. It took me a long time to accept what I had become. I rationalized my decisions saying it was just something I did when I was not in my senses. Or that I can quit any day - "

"I am sure it wasn't all bad!" He interrupted again.

"- no it wasn't. The work helped me destress. It seemed like it was taking all my troubles away in an instant. I could always bond with old and new friends over work and I sure have some good memories of that. But now I know that was just an illusion."

He gave me a look of total confusion. Was he deliberately trying to throw me off? I continued.

"It is affecting my health. It is affecting my relationships. And I know that it will affect other people around me. It only used to take up one or two hours of my life but now it has reached a point where it takes up my whole day. It is the first thing I think of when I wake up. When I go to sleep. After a meal. After a drink. After pretty much everything. I have become dependent. I think...I mean..I know I want to quit!"

I immediately regretted faltering at the end and I felt him pouncing on the opportunity. He sat up in his chair and started with a patronizing tone.

"You have all valid concerns there. If something was affecting my life that way I would have quit long time ago. But I am not sure that you are facing these problems because of the work we do here. We have had cases like yours before and you know - we always take care of our own. They all had inherent psychological or physical problems and we got them the help they needed!"

"I don't - " I wanted to inform him of my completely reliable sanity.

"Hear me out. Here, at this firm, we care for our employees. Our own people. I am afraid that you will make a rash decision here and then regret it later. Quitting now, at this age, you will miss out on hanging out with your friends every single day. You must agree that things will never be the same with them. And not only will you lose your friends, there have been plenty of cases in the past where an employee quit and he could not handle being away from this work. That only led to his otherwise normal relationships with his family and friends getting worse and worse till one day - he snapped! And he had to come begging for his job. We of course welcomed him but why did he have to go through all that unnecessary embarrassment?!"

He had worked himself up into a mild frenzy and he paused for a moment. Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward and almost continued in a whisper.

"Look. I am not asking you to do this work for your whole life. Enjoy it while you can and then quit. Look at you. You are so young! This isn't the time for you to worry about all this..."

I knew where he was going with all this. I had heard his speech before. All this time I had been almost cowering. I sat up straight and looked him in the eye.

"No. Sir. I want to quit. That is my final decision." My voice resounded with a hollow confidence.

He looked at me as if I had suddenly left him with no choice.

"It didn't have to be like this. I never wanted things to come to this but..."
He trailed off as he searched through a file in his desk drawer.

He pulled out a piece of paper and slid it towards me. A photocopy of a letter with my signature on it. I did not remember signing it.

"...I know you don't remember signing that. But you did. This is no way to retain an employee and I am always against using such trumps but you leave me no choice. Read it."

I could swear his eyes were glowing red and it felt like he had suddenly grown a lot taller and wider as he leaned forward in his chair. His presence saturated the room. He surely meant business.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. The writing on that page was brief but it aptly captured everything without leaving any loopholes.

"I...I...I signed off my life? What is this nonsense? You expect me to believe this crap?"

"Believe what you want but understand this. I. Own. You. This company owns you. You signed off your life. You will be a slave to this work till I want you to be." Each word of his was cutting through my brain.

Then it happened. A sudden flash of a memory long forgotten. A drunken night at an office party. Someone offering me the letter and me in my intoxicated state not thinking twice before signing it. That was the night when I started the work and that was the only night when I enjoyed it the most. I felt cool and I felt closer to my friends. We were one in death. At least we suddenly were riding along the same fatal roads to an eventual premature demise. I felt like I had reached a new high.

"How conveniently you had forgotten all about it!" My boss could read my mind.

I knew there was nothing more to say. The situation was not impossible. I could fight it. But everything else that he had said about me regretting my decision suddenly started weighing on my mind. I felt my resolve complete snap and dissolve.

Shakily I got off the chair and turned around without looking at him. As I reached the door I heard him call my name. He was again leaning back on his chair the way he was when I entered the room. He again had that courteous smile on his face. He had me. He owned me.

"I am glad we could have this talk. Welcome back."

I let the door close lightly behind me as I walked back to my desk. I knew once I reached there I would be able to de-stress myself by getting lost in some work. Other colleagues, Other friends around me were lost in their work. I wondered how many of them had attempted to quit.

Suddenly, not being alone on this road didn't seem like much of a consolation.