Challenge #01608-D147: Repent Now...

[Name] sighed and turned back to their paperwork. In the scant few minutes they’d been talking with the other person, the paper seemed to have multiplied. It was breeding. There was a giant paperwork orgy going on right on their desk, and it was all they could do to fill out forms faster than they were produced. -- RecklessPrudence

They say paperwork is hell. They don't have the half of it. Imagine the largest offices in the world. Floor after floor of endless, uniform, windowless cubicles. Floor after floor of grey monotony. Floor after floor of filling out and shuffling paperwork from an inbox into the relevant outbox. And no potty or coffee breaks.

They have no time to look up from their work. They dare not take even a second from one paper to the other. They dare not stretch. There is no time to sigh. Their only hope is to fill in the paperwork before the next page enters their inbox. If they do not, the paper in their inbox doubles.

There is a clever device that takes the page from the bottom of the heap and juts it out to where it can be seized so that the worker can fill it out. It is not that clever, and often jams. Those in the cubicles hit the red button and grab a page from the top. They cannot afford to wait. They cannot afford to stop. They barely have time to suckle from the coffee dribbler or nibble a bite from the treats dispenser. They sit, bare-bottomed, on a hybrid of a toilet and an office chair. There is no rest.

This is hell. Specifically, this is hell for all the blank-faced officials who would not bend the rules to help those in need.

Those who refused food to the hungry are sentenced to permanently fill the dispensers for those who toil in this cubicle hell.

Those who refused to fix the amenities for the slums they owned are condemned to spend eternity repairing the clever devices that break down so very often.

And as for those who, in indolent wealth, accused the poor or destitute of being lazy? They're the runners that take the endless reams of paper from one outbox to the relevant inbox. If they dare to stop, their feet spontaneously combust.

Satan and his angels are supervisors. Dressed in three-piece suits and carrying a permanent cup of coffee. They stroll around the cubicles and get in the way of the runners. They lounge against the cubicle walls and quip, "So... working hard or hardly working, amiright?" or stop the penitent to demand the correct cover for the TPS reports, thereby quadrupling the workload.

This is hell.

And it is always Monday.

This is hell for everyone who has forgotten what 'Charity' truly means.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / viperagp]

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