Renovation of the executive suite begins, and the occupants move to an adjoining space for the duration.The next morning we arrive to find the temporary digs coated in plaster dust from the work next-door.
Ghengis stomps off to intimidate the work crew.
Moments later Dr. G. Zuss walks in, and Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant goes into action: "I've already dusted my office. Would you like me to do yours?"
There's no reply. I can never read Dr. G. Zuss on whether even he is sometimes gob-smacked by the degree of self-abasement that Jesus' BAA achieves.
At she does at times like early this very month, when her husband was hospitalized. The day of his release, she's getting ready to leave—at her quitting time—when Dr. G. Zuss steps out of his office and directs a lost, helpless look in her direction. Jesus' BAA immediate reaction: "Oh! I'm supposed to take my husband home—is it OK if I leave?"
This time, too, Dr. G. Zuss does not reply. I don't know if even he gets a bit uncomfortable with his assistant's slavish nature. Or, if he's simply taken aback when an underling speaks in his presence.
The others are in temporary offices while I'm in an adjoining space—sitting in a hallway, in fact. The space is partly partitioned off from foot traffic, but open to the Ghengis' inspection, which happens whenever he walks in or out of his office two rooms away.
It's still coat weather, and there happens to be a hook attached to my workspace partition. One day I decide—just for the hell of it—to hang my coat there. As expected, it hangs only until Ghengis' next trip past—he stops cold, bursts into the space, and—at least his clenched teeth moderated the volume of his screaming—"It looks bad! Hang your coat in the closet!"
I'm sitting in a shabby hall of a shabby building, newly hung with plastic tarps so dust will never again threaten the executives' spaces. What this really is about is the attitude that employees are meant to seen only when needed—a hanging coat intrudes on management's need to believe that staff are invisible until summoned. And as Dr. G. Zuss can see me from the side opposite where Ghengis does his inspections, those executive eyes need shielding from the fact that an employee owns a coat.
Simultaneously with this move, the lunch room is being redone and the coffee maker has moved to the floor below. So that Dr. G. Zuss will not be inconvenienced, Jesus' BAA brings her coffee maker from home, setting it up in a vacant cubicle outside Dr. G. Zuss' office.
She also brings a daily haul of Sam's Club industrial-sized packs of cookies and cake. These grow stale, sitting as they do in a space that only Dr. G. Zuss may enter. I presume that in her fevered mind, Jesus' BAA believes the master has a bottomless and godlike capacity for caffeine and sugar, which she must supply in suitable quantities.
This whole procedure leads her to send me annoying e-mails—
Subject: Coffee potThis suggests she actually plans to leave on time (a half-hour before I can escape), so must intervene to prevent Dr. G. Zuss' being deprived of coffee from 4:30-5:00.
Before you leave, can you be sure the coffee pot is turned off, left-over coffee is dumped and the grounds are taken out?
A piece of news in our town: a "Body World" show is coming to the area. It's one of the knockoffs, where all the formerly living people have very Chinese features.
Though I refer to her here as "Clever Sister," she is just as much Serious, Thoughtful Sister. For a year or two she's forwarded articles about these shows, and how profoundly disturbing they are—given uncertainties about how bodies are obtained, and the questionable poses used in exhibiting them.
Some British coverage of the exhibit, and its creator, Gunther von Hagens, is here, here, and here.
And this reports Van Hagens' plan to open a "plastination factory" on land he's purchased in Poland. His father travels there to represent the business... before skipping out, following accusations of his involvement in World War II war crimes against Poles.
Articles, including some graphic description of exhibits, are here and here.
This British writer also places the "redefinition of the human body within consumer culture" in the context of medical service cuts joined to the current thinking on individual responsibility of "health care consumers"—
The foundation of the National Health Service in 1948 institutionalized the idea that health was a matter of state responsibility towards the public. Within this context, patients tended to defer to medical experts, in whose hands they placed their bodies. In recent years, however, these patients have become consumers of health care with contractual relationships to service providers. In the new order consumers’ rights over their bodies and the bodies of their relatives are paramount. Furthermore, as state paternalism has diminished, health-care systems place increasing responsibility on individuals for maintaining their own health. Health, in other words, is less a matter of social welfare and more a matter of individual choice, self-awareness and responsibilityI bring up the topic to someone at work who previously worked in nursing (and who seems to be one of the more OK people in this setting). She's gone with relatives' kids to a show in another state—and found it "very educational, and tastefully done." She also sounds offended at my bringing up questions about the appropriateness—I don't know if that's just my read, or if she imagines being annoyed by picketers outside her tasteful exhibit.
This all relates to what seems most disturbing (if predictable): these shows become just one more entertainment opportunity to be consumed by the masses. And they're being justified as "educational," instead of "mindless entertainment."
A local weekly publishes a story about the exhibit that's arrived, as well as the other shows and controversies around them. And the article reveals that our very own university does "plastination" of cadavers, for use by the medical school.
This has no connection with the commercial shows—and there is no question about how those cadavers are obtained. Nevertheless, the whole enterprise sounds creepy, and the article includes a photo of the two Chinese pathologists who prepare the cadavers. The family and I immediately dub the shorter, more stooped, large-eared of the two—"Igor"—as he totally, unnervingly looks the part! (The other, somewhat less frightening in appearance guy becomes, "Not Igor.")
After reading the article, I suddenly begin seeing these two get on my bus at the end of the day! I don't know which to suppress first: the urge to bail, or the urge to laugh hysterically.
And I'm also cringing at the thought of them coming near me, though that never happens. Igor, in particular, always makes for a seat in the front. He's quite voluble, getting into animated conversations with whomever he sits next to. Not a good sign, as we know from horror pix...
One day Igor appears to be daydreaming (of what, I would not want to know). He snaps out of it when he sees the bus is leaving his stop, while he's still seated. He gasps, frantically pulls the cord, bolts out of his seat and charges toward the rear door of the bus—where he slams full-force into a strap-hanging passenger unlucky enough to be in his path.
I'm not sure if this is just bus etiquette in Beijing. Or if it's more like narrowly focused specialist behavior—it may be that people just aren't all that noticeable to the guy, until it's time to go to work on their corpses.
It's a male passenger of average height who's been slammed: he's stunned to look down and see a middle-aged man charging him at chest level. Then he observes the demented rush at the exit, and smiles nervously.
Despite Igor's frenzy, the next stop is not far, and it's where I get off. The slamee exits ahead of me and walks in the same direction. I avert my eyes, fighting the urge to "share," as in asking, "Do you have any idea who slammed into you?!"
After this incident, I manage to get through an Igor-less day or two, until a takeout meal offers me this suggestion:
No comments:
Post a Comment