Michael did not mind good luck for as long as itwould secure him permanent employment and take him off the agency books. He made peace with his quiet ambitions of becoming a comedianand lied to himself that connecting black plastic elements was a rational careerchoice presenting life-changing opportunities. A better future was within hisgrasp. He started thinking about setting up a family and spent the wholeweekend dating online. Most girls he wrote to did not reply. Those who did werein dire financial straits, pledging their commitment and willingness torelocate if he was about to send them money. Michael was an idealist seeking adeeper connection. He refused to fall in love unless they lived in the samecountry.
On Monday he went back to work full of optimism. He was convinced there was someone out there for him. He was right. His name was Andy. He just came back from his holiday and welcomed Michael with an unfriendly frown. Then he noticed neat formations of small black plastic elements populating his bench, frowned again, moved his head with disapproval, picked up a dirty cardboard box lying idle around, and swept all plastic elements into it with one energetic move of his hairy arm. Michael watched this brutal intrusion into his little world in grim silence.
Andy picked up a hardbrush and swept the bench thoroughly uncovering under the layers of dust, itsoriginal dirty fabric. The company was reluctant to replace it as it wouldrepresent an investment with no return. Once that was done and dusted, Andy wentstraight to Roger, stretched his neck out, and pointed his hand behind in aclear act of argumentative condemnation. He was not a happy man. Roger dismissedhim and Andy left hissupervisor bitter and disappointed.
Andy left his supervisor bitter and disappointed. Andy was always bitter and disappointed. Holiday cost him too much money. The kids cost him too much money. Fuel cost him too much money. Money cost him too much money. Nothing was cheap. Everything was expensive. He worked hard all his life. He worked too far away from home. The breaks were too short. The weather was too bad. The parents got old. Roger did not listen. It was an onslaught. Unlike any other moan Michael had ever confronted in his life, Andy's moan had no end. Where a common moan would naturally fade away, Andy's moan pressed forward in a monotonous drip of constant negativity. It was baffling.
Andy had everything most people would die for: financial stability, full-time employment, pension, education opportunities, access to the internet and drinking water. His loving wife did not bother to cheat on him with local plumbers while their two healthy kids were running around a big garden on the back of 3 bedroom house he has had extended recently with the lottery money he had won on a scratch card he had paid 50p for. There was not enough good luck going his way to out weight the dystopian worry crippling his sense of reality that whatever blessing of fortune he was subjugated to, surely it would not last forever and therefore it was much more sensible to worry in advance about disasters which may not happen at all than to enjoy moments of humble prosperity with the close ones. Andy was surrounded by lamentation like fresh horseshit by files
Michael was truly touched. He had never seen a man so privileged and so unaware of it. Driven by pity and compassion, he made the grave mistake of initiating a positive interaction. Andy, as a naturally negative guy, understood positive interaction as an opportunity to moan about everything else. In Andy's opinion, everything else was far too expensive in this country. There was a price to be paid for it. At the age of thirty-three, Andy looked like fifty-seven. He had a large, bold head screwed up to a thick neck attached to a small, child-like frame with skinny shoulders and an innocent belly of a well-fed toddler. Scrubby tufts of silver hair grew around his ears, on his neck, and stuck out of his t-shirt collar. His dirty, perfectly square hands either resembled adjustable spanners or a set of worn-out garden shovels. He looked like a missing link between modern humans and primates and could have been a victim of illegal experiments conducted against his will at a secret underground facility where quiet men in white overcoats were free to inject him with every substance available to them.
