The Faster Filer in the West

Filing. It's a word that seems somehow bound up with the East India Company: melting sweaty starched shirts, neat round glasses, obsessive overorganization, unseen ex-pickpocket Coolies darting around with dextrous fingers while fat Englishmen hassle them for another James Squire and a palm-leaf fan. The practice seems bizarrely out of line with the supposed weightlessness of the information economy: the idea that there are actual pieces of paper that correspond to a company's information is comically archaic, sort of like finding out that currency trading between countries is still done by wheeling piles of gold around Fort Knox on little motorized vehicles nicknamed 'gold buggies.'


But while the gold standard was canned last century (correct me here, economists), and the gold buggies were melted down into Oscar statuettes, the practice of filing, I'm glad to say, is alive and well in early 20th Century Australia. I know, because I file for a (temporary) living. Death certificates, mostly: oh, sure, there's the occasional affidavit or bank statement, but these patches of excitement are fleeting (though undeniably exquisite!).

* * *

A FILER'S MORNING

N.B.: All intellectual games take place over a steady background noise of superefficient filing ('swish clack swish clack ow swish clack clang swish').

After approximately four hours of filing, it is virtually impossible not to invent nasty little games to make it more fun. A typical filer's activities are outlined below. (Please note that this does not refer to any specific filer. Rather, it speaks for all filers in the universe.)

1. "Life Expectancy!" (usually played from 9am - 10am)

Who will win? Morris Walsh from Monbulk (b. 1931), or Susan Smith, from Mentone (b. 1925)? Go, Morris! Go, Morris! Go, Morris! (Adds up numbers in head) Oh, damn you, Susan! (Morris is barely pipped at the post by Susan, who manages to keep on the perch till 2006, 3 years longer than Morris). Filer throws manila folder onto floor, in frustration at forgetting that women tend to live longer than men for some unknown reason.

2. "Life's Big Questions!" (10am-11am)
Why do women live longer than men? Is it because they have periods, thus cleansing the blood supply somehow? (My friend told me this in year 8 sex ed class. He knew what 69ing meant, so why would he be wrong here?) Or, is it because men do more home renovations than women, wantonly sticking their fingers in fuseboxes? (5-10 min. digression: is this 'fusebox' theory a clever sexual metaphor? And is it ethically right to diverge from thinking about life expectancy to thinking about sex?) Come to think of it, aren't women asking a bit much with all this equal rights racket, when they live longer than us? Don't they make it up in quantity? (end with 10 min. quasi-Catholic penance for un-PC direction interior monologue has taken.)

3. "Woman walks into room!" (11-11.02). Followed by 1 hour 58 min of 'thinking' about woman (11:02-1:00).
INT. CONCRETE BASEMENT. DAY. LIT BY SINGLE, FLICKERING FLORESCENT TUBE, ATOP OF WHICH IS STREWN ASSORTED FRIED BUGS. HUNCHBACKED FILER SHUFFLES BETWEEN FILING SHELVES, MUTTERING AND SCRATCHING TESTICLES WHEN REQUIRED.

Enter first WOMAN who has come into the filing basement that week.

WOMAN: Hello there, I was just wondering if you could find this file-

FILER looks at woman, a kindly glint in his one remaining eye. The bolt through his neck glimmers appealingly. He attempts to unstoop his shoulders, which make an alarming cracking noise as he does so. His hands are covered in paper cuts. He has not shaved in days, and may have slept in the filing basement on Tuesday and Wednesday nights after everyone had gone home. He can't really remember: every room looks like a basement to him now. He smiles affectionately at the woman, but the filer's basement-enforced lack of social graces make his expression seem comical and strange. Moreover, the light is rather unflattering, and does not do justice to FILER's moisturizing regime.

FILER (speaking rapidly, yet articulating his words quite clearly, considering the circumstances):

HellomynameisTimandI'monlydoingthistemporarilyandafterthisIhavemanyexpensiveplansinvolving
- *hunchbacked filer takes deep, jagged, gasping breath* -

takingyoutoexpensivecountriesinfirstclassandoffsettingthecarbonwecreatebybyplantingtrees -

Exit WOMAN, pursued by FILER.

FILER re-enters basement. For the next two hours, he can be heard to mutter fragments of a language that does not sound very much like English at all.

1:00-2:00 Lunchtime!
FILER exits office, clicking heels of hobnail boots as he does so. Tries to use coffee machine, burns hand, curses extravagantly, eats donut, goes to sleep on conference table. Mutters random numbers as company director and several secretaries try to roll him onto the carpet. After a while, a tablecloth is laid over the filer. The permanent employees try to ignore him, but he smells so bad that they fail.

EXHAUSTED FILER: 16....132....*burp*.....2885.....*snore*.....

OTHER EMPLOYEES: Eww.