Chapter 3 Homeoffice

 Kirk had no other choice. First, there was this nasty divorce with his wife of twenty years who decided to keep the house and asked Kirk to leave. Then there was this skiing accident. He went skiing just to forget about his failing personal life and ended up with a leg broken in three places, stuck for months in plaster. 

And then he was getting these calls from neighbors that his father was behaving strangely and needed supervision. Kirk didn’t have the heart to put him into an institution, so he decided to come back to his hometown, live temporarily with his father, seven dogs, and three cats (Kirk also didn’t have the heart to forbid his father from getting these animals, what else should the old man do with his time?) and heal his broken leg. Father was almost ninety, Kirk was almost fifty, and being the head of the Paris’ DADANTI office, he quickly renegotiated his deal and, taking into account his recent circumstances, decided to work temporarily from home. 

First, he created an office for himself in his old childhood’s room, put in boxes all toys that might be visible in the computer camera during meetings, ordered a comfortable chair that could also stabilize his broken leg. He learned to walk with crutches up and down the stairs of this old pre-war house, in which he was conceived and where he spent his childhood. 

His father, Kai, had the first stages of Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t only that: for years he had been treated for mental problems: it oscillated between paranoia, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, but any of these diseases weren’t in their final development. Kirk occasionally doubted that the father had Alzheimer’s at all, maybe just old-age sclerosis, but he was taking medications, and he was also drinking alcohol with those, making the result hazardous and bizarre.

Was taking care of his father a more difficult task than controlling a multi-million dollar business? Yes. And even though for twenty years he had been married with a failure, for twenty-five years he had been working for DADANTI with success. 

But now he had to face the reality. Now was a different time in his life, a time when most men had (yes, maybe a late one) a middle-age crisis, a time when he had to reach within and find the force in him alone. 

At first, he established a weekly call with all the employees in the Paris office to boost up the morale and discuss everyday matters. 

‘Can everybody hear me?’

‘Yes, Kirk, go on…’

‘Yes, we hear you just fine.’

‘Where are you? Is it your childhood room?’

‘Yes, yes. I tried to clean it, but you know how it is with walking with these things. You’re like the character of Stephen King’s novel “Misery”, you’re just bed-ridden most of the time.’

‘Hopefully, you won’t be killed by an ax!’

‘Hahaha’

‘HAHAHA’

‘Yes, funny, Denis. Hopefully, I won’t. Ok, during these calls I’m going to discuss recent matters and problems we have to face. Manisha, can I ask you for a favor about something?’

Manisha was a young girl employed about a year ago from Sri Lanka.

‘Yes?’

‘I want you to mute any background noises when I speak. There are so many of you that I don’t want to hear those pinging reminders that you received a message or someone calls you. Can I ask you for it?’

‘Yes.’ Manisha said yes even though she didn’t fully understand what Kirk was saying. She wasn’t that fluent in French. 

But after a moment’s thought, she found the right button and muted Kirk. 

All Paris employees were looking at Kirk, who moved his mouth and changed facial expressions, sometimes even laughed to himself, telling a joke. But no one, not even a single person admitted loudly that it was Kirk who was muted. And no one had the desire to unmute him. They just looked at him, placed him in the background of their computer screens, opened their mailboxes, and went back to their business. 

For fifteen minutes, Kirk was saying something but there was no one interested in what he had to say. 

And then from next week, people just automatically muted him, so he was giving his speeches to a very indifferent audience. Everybody also muted their microphones not to disturb Kirk and for fifteen minutes every week, almost all Paris employees of DADANTI sat in the office in total silence. It became a routine, as a routine for Kirk became wearing some decent clothes and appearing in front of his employees. 

Kirk had no idea that he was ultimately talking to himself. He only felt that he must be boring as people didn’t remember what he was talking about during these calls.

‘I mentioned it today in the morning!’ he complained, irritated.

‘Kirk, I’m not attending these calls, you know it. I’m employing this girl Paula, btw.’ Beata (a rare occasion) was in the office. ‘She will take over HENRY when you’re at home or at least until your leg heals. I will ask someone to introduce her to the product. I liked her, she’s young and unscrupulous. And ambitious. She might compete for your position in the future.’

‘Am I unscrupulous?’

‘I know you longer than your wife knew you and I’m still around.’ Beata laughed, ‘Remember that you have calls with the board every other Friday. They are more important than those little speeches of yours. If you need me, you will reach me via mail. But please, bother Claudia instead.’

Kirk rolled his eyes. Claudia was over seventy and no one could force her to retire. 

Meanwhile, the father was in the toilet and the sounds of farts started to be heard via the speakers.

‘What is that sound?’

Kirk felt slightly embarrassed.

‘Something outside the window. Let’s wrap it up for today. Thank you for Paula. Give her a warm welcome and I will say something about it during my next week's official call.’

He managed to finish the conversation with his father’s another loud fart, this time accompanied by dogs’ barking. Yes, it sounded like a bomb. And while Kirk remembered his father’s loud farts from when he was a child, these forty years later they seemed to be twice as loud. They sounded more like shots from a machine gun or emergency landing of a plane when he was particularly bloated. 

In general, the father was loud. He spoke loudly (he was almost deaf), ate loudly, drank loudly, even picked his nose loudly. Everything in this house was loud, cracks in the floors, doors not oiled for years, dogs chasing cats, cats running after dogs, and playing with each other. Back there, in his private office room, everything was quiet. Here, only Kirk was quiet, muted every week during his motivational calls, of which he wasn’t even aware.