No reasonable person could call working in the peldak bureaucracy ‘difficult’. Most normal people wouldn’t even call it tedious. When you get down to it, the workload is so barren and simple that most bureaucrats would be spending most of their time waiting for more paperwork to arrive.
Sadly, peldaks are not normal, nor are they reasonable.
Three short hours after Cyryl starts his first day on the job, he heads over to Tymon’s current cubicle, and nearly collapses. The man’s breathing is hard, the rise and fall of his chest exaggerated, and he’s leaning against the cubicle wall for support. Such a sight was common when the bureaucracy first began, so the cubicle walls were reinforced with metal on the insides, and screwed into the ground. All to keep these seven feet tall, overdramatic children from tipping them over and making a mess.
“Tymon!” His weary voice shouts, “Wh-when, uh… when’s break?” The typical peldak workday is 12 hours long. Five hours at the beginning of the day, a two-hour break in the middle, then five more hours to end it off. Some businesses, like restaurants, adjust their hours so they’re open while their customers are on break.
Tymon doesn’t turn around, nor does he stop reading resource requests. “I don’t have time to babysit all of you. So long as the day ends with your work complete, take as many breaks as you want. If you’re quick enough with your math, you can come in at the last hour and do everything then, if you want.”
“O-oh!” Cyryl’s ears perk, “that’s-“
Tymon spins the chair around, “I can tell you right now that you’re not quick enough to try that. You won’t finish your work on time, you’ll just make a mess for the warehouse. That being said, the second floor of this building has a gym, the third floor has a cafeteria, and there’s a pool in the building across the canal.” Tymon swivels back around to the desk, “just take an hour to clear your head. It’s easier to focus on your work if you tire yourself out first.”
Cyryl clenches his jaw, “just an hour? You get tired after so little?”
Tymon rolls his eyes and shakes his head, “then take three hours, I don’t care. Just get your work done on time or I’ll report you, and you’ll get another decade tacked onto your civil service requirements.”
Cyryl clenches his fists, but backs up without another word, then stomps his way down to the second floor’s gym.
The gym floor features a single large room with large windows on the front, left, and right walls. There are three strong columns arranged in a triangle for support. The center of the room has a raised boxing arena, with a padded floor, and padded ropes sectioning it off. Two men stand inside, shirtless, sweating, with large, weighted, padded gloves. The men don’t display a hint of tactics or strategy, they’re just taking turns punching each other as hard as they can. Around the arena are a dozen more men, watching and cheering on their friends.
On the floor to the left of the arena is a space sectioned off for the metal scaffolding required for bench presses and squats. Everyone on that side is crowded around a young man going for a person best bench press, 2,730 pounds in total.
The floor to the right of the arena features treadmills. Some peldaks are sprinting, sustaining 40 miles an hour for several minutes at a time. Others are going for distance, with the farthest treadmill indicating that the woman has been running for 25 miles.
Behind the arena is a space reserved for punching bags, with the top and bottom of the reinforced cylindrical bags tethered to the ceiling and floor. Much like the arena, the peldaks over there don’t bother with any fancy tactics, they’re just wailing on the bag with all the strength they can muster.
“Hello,” a woman behind an L-shaped desk to the right of the door says. Her eyes are half-closed and there’s a distinct sluggishness to her voice as she looks up from a large book. Her brown hair is in a messy ponytail, and she’s wearing baggy grey clothes that almost hide her pregnant belly.
“Hey,” Cyryl says, dividing his attention between the room and her. “Do I have to sign up or anything?”
The woman waves him off, dismissively, “nah, nothing like that. Come and go as you please, Mr.?”
“Cyryl Racki, 357.”
“I’m Eliza Pierog, 433” she says with a slight, yet genuine, smile. “Come and go as you please, Mr. Racki.”
“So, what do you do here?” He leans an elbow on the desk, and notices a few sticky notes pasted around. Each has a name, and a time.
“You criminal types aren’t so good at keeping track of time. Just let me know how long you’d like to stay at the gym, and I’ll remind you when it’s time to go back to your boring, agonizing, dreadful, dull, tedious, monotonous desk job.”
Cyryl sighs, “that… would be helpful.”
“Uh-huh. Back before I started, you convicts would just forget about your criminal sentence and keep working out all day. Then paperwork wouldn’t get done, you’d get even longer sentences as punishment, it was a mess.” She glances to a sticky note on the far left, “ooh, actually.” She grabs a whistle, turns to the main floor of the gym, takes a deep breath, then blows. A sharp, yet not ear-piercing, chime spreads throughout the floor, instinctively perking the long ears of every peldak. “Gabriel! Time’s up, head back to your desk so you can slave away with more mindless paper-pushing.”
Gabriel, one of the shirtless men in the ring, backs off, “aww, come on, Eliza-“ the other man in the ring punches him in the side. Gabriel glares at him for a second as the men around them suppress their giggles. “Push it back like five more minutes, I’m almost done!”
“No,” Eliza says with a motherly tone and a defiant cross of her arms. “You said you wanted a two-hour break; it’s been two hours. If you start asking for extensions, you’ll never want to go back to your desk.”
“But, I-!” Gabriel looks around the room, but he finds no sympathetic faces. Everyone knows she’s right, even if nobody wants to admit it. Also, most of them want him to get out of the ring so they can take a turn. With a deep sigh and a roll of his head, he gets out of the ring and takes off his gloves.
Cyryl turns back to her, “what would you have done if he just said no? Do you have security to drag him back to his desk?”
“Ha! No, of course not. If Mr. Serial Arson over there didn’t want to go, he’d just stay here, then get in trouble for skipping work. But he knows the score. Anyway,” she leans back on her padded chair and gently sets a hand on her belly, “what criminal activity landed you here, newbie?”
“Uh, rioting. Inciting a riot during a pressball game.”
“Aaah,” she nods, “that’ll getcha. Sometimes I feel like pressball stadiums are specifically designed to incite riots, you know? Just so the bureaucracy has a continual supply of workers. What city was it?”
“Pelda.”
Her eyes widen, “the capital, really? Come on, it’s so beautiful though. I hope you didn’t break anything of historical significance. The authorities don’t joke around with that, it’ll land you a century in here.”
Cyryl waves her off, “it was just normal stuff. Breaking windows, flipping cars, a few fires, beating up guards.”
Eliza nods, “who hasn’t, right?”
“Yeah.” He looks down and knocks on the desk, “so now I’m here for 35 years.”
She whistles sharply, which perks a few ears. “That’s a bit harsh.”
Cyryl nods, “That’s what I thought.”
Eliza puts a finger to her chin and thinks for a moment. “With a sentence like that… I take it you’ve got no wife or kids?”
“…Can you remind me to head back in 30 minutes?”
She giggles, then takes out a sticky note and pencil, “under an hour? We’ll see how long that lasts, haha.”
From Cyryl’s perspective, he walks over to the bench press area, loads a bar with 350 pounds on each side, lays down, lifts it once, then a sharp whistle jolts him to an upright position.
“Cyryl!” She yells, waving her hand in a circle, “it’s been 30 minutes, head back up.”
“Wh-what?! He yells, looking around at everyone else as they try not to laugh. “But I just sat down!”
Eliza raises an eyebrow, “Mr. Racki, you’ve been busting out reps non-stop this entire time.”
He stares at her, “wh-… I have? What?” He looks down and pats his bicep and chest, “I’m not even tired.”
“That’s usually how it goes for newbies. Now head back upstairs and return to your mind-numbing tedium. It wouldn’t be a punishment if you didn’t want to kill yourself to make the agony stop!”
“Are…” He raises an eyebrow, “are you messing with me?”
“Yes, I am.” The room explodes in laughter. Everyone in the gym got fooled by the same prank when it was their first time. “You’ve still got 30 minutes, have fun with your workout.”
Cyryl’s cheeks and ears turn red, then does his best to ignore the embarrassment of being fooled so easily.