Mary’s respect for her impoverished employer had been dissipating for years but had slipped substantially over the last week. It was a week ago that Mary was scolded by her boss’s boss for allegedly breaching flexitime rules. The inciting incident involved lunch, which workers were required to take, even though there was no time, no where, and no thing to eat. If workers didn’t clock in and out at lunchtime, they were docked an extra thirty minutes. Mary’s ‘pod’ of six therefore removed their IDs from their necks at noon and took turns to go downstairs and flex each other in and out. It was a futile exercise, as no-one ever had time to take the minutes they saved, but it provided some comfort. Once rage-filled poverty-busters, Mary and her pod now rebelled by pooling lanyards at noon.

‘What are you doing?’ Mary’s boss’s boss, Shirley, had said when she caught her gang-pinging the machine seven days previously.

Mary had been getting red-mist attacks for eighteen months and could feel one coming on. Weight-related insults screamed within. She had to suppress them.

‘It’s prohibited to use another person’s ID,’ Shirley had said.

‘Is it?’ Mary continued to ping. ‘Look how many hours I’m up, and there’s no way for me to use them.’

‘In that case, what’s the point in what you’re doing, Mary?’

Using someone’s name in a sentence should be banned. ‘Mary’ hung there for seconds before she said, ‘It’s all right for you, Shirley. You obviously have plenty of time to eat lunch.’

Oops.

Because of that incident, a meeting was being convened by Shirley and Mary’s boss to discuss the potential need for an urgent meeting with Mary.

News quickly spread throughout the office. Mary was a Registered Flex Offender.

She was also at stage three in terms of sickness. Stage three was a terrible thing to be at, apparently. Colleagues took sharp intakes of breath when Mary told them she was at stage three. Mary had spread, she could metastasise, and die. If she took another sick day this year – and it was only halfway through – very, very bad things would happen.

No-one took sick leave anymore. Apart from anything, the workers were terrified that others would get a chance to look into their cases then out them as lazy and shit. Lil had come in with pneumonia the previous year and fainted in the loo, but only Mary knew. Helena shared terrible infections with her pod almost weekly, and Jeff had come in two days after breaking one leg, two arms and his collarbone in a car accident on the way back from Troon Live. He needed three support workers to help him write court reports and go to the loo, but his sickness record was impeccable.