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THEN WE CAME TO THE END

Joshua Ferris

2007 / 3 / 1

ISBN-10 : 0-316-02760-X

ISBN-13 : 978-0-316-02760-1

"What we didn't consider was that in a downturn, we were the mismanaged inventory, and we were about to be dumped like a glut of imported circuit boards.
 On the drive home we puzzled over who was next.......
 Names--just names to anyone else, but to us they were the individuals who generated our greatest sympathy. The ones who put their things in a box, shook a few hands, and left without complaint. They had no choice in the matter, and they possessed a quiet resignation to their ill-timed fates. As they departed, it almost felt to us like self-sacrifice. They left, so that we might stay."

"Nobody wants pity. They just want to get the hell out of there, out of sight, to alleviate the sting of ridicule, and then they want to forget about the entire miserable experience."

When a person is thinking about feeling sexy, it is always with the idea of someone else in mind. Someone in the back of the mind who says, “ I can’t believe how sexy you look in that.” And just who is that person for her ? Unfortunately the timing is such that it can’t be anybody other than You-know-……-well –who, and that is no longer an option.

The funny thing about work itself, it was bearable. The dreariest task was perfectly bearable. It presented sense of urgency, and the satisfaction of a task’s completion-on any given day, those things made work utterly, even harmoniously bearable. What we bitched about, what we couldn’t let lie, what drove us to distraction and consumed us with blind fury, was this person or that who rankled and bugged and offended angels in heaven, who wore their clothes all wrong and foisted upon us their insufferable features, who deserved from a just god nothing but scorn because they were insipid, unpoetic, mercilessly enduring, and lost to the grand gesture. And maybe so, yes, maybe so. But as we stood there, we had a hard time recalling the specific details, because everyone seemed so agreeable.