Tomorrow is the last day of my summer job, in which I am employed right up to the bitterest of ends (Uni starts on Thursday). I have waited until now to recount just how Kafkaesque it is.
For the last four weeks, I have sat in a room, on my own. Allow me to set the scene: the room has no walls, no ceiling, no number, and - until recently - no key. Inside it sit bags of cement, two shopping trolleys, and about ten filing cabinets.
There I have sat, punching holes in computer print-outs that were part of a paperless office system. There are four-hundred page files in which each page contains merely one temperature reading. And then there are the blank files with no details, and no records, except the name, which is "M". And then there is the fact that mentioning that last detail is probably criminal, or would at least result in me losing my job.
Not that I didn't appreciate the job, of course. Far from it. Without it, I'd be sitting in a room with a horrible carpet, talking to a computer. And not getting paid. I don't know which is the more Kafkaesque.
Cheers,
Derek.
PS. I never got past page 20 of Kafka's The Castle, so I don't know if my experiences were bona fide Kafka, but one can assume....
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