A Bad Morning

Waking up early in a cold Johannesburg winter almost made Kenneth miss prison. The only cure for a winter morning was a hot shower, and he had been deprived of those for the last six months. His landlord’s promises to fix the building’s geyser were proving to be worth less than sand in the desert. Still, every day since summer he had woken with the naïve hope that it would no longer be an issue. Every day disappointment greeted him.

It had been almost a full year since Kenneth was released on parole. Employment opportunities were hard enough to come by without a criminal record, with one it was close to impossible. Yet by some miracle he found full employment. His boss, Rory Smith, was a man whose son was struggling with a drug addiction, which made him sympathetic to Kenneth’s situation. It did also mean that Smith would impose upon Kenneth the failures and troubles regarding his son’s affliction, which was more than often tiresome.

It puts money in the bank, Kenneth thought, closing the so-called “hot water” tap until only a single drop of cold disappointment dripped out.

It was only six hours into the morning and already a bad day.

Kenneth picked out the clothes he meant to wear to work and plugged in the iron to press his clothes. It was just as the machines began heat that the electricity went out. He prayed it was just the tripped switch in his apartment, but then the emergency generator in the building next door began to growl without end.

No elevator today, huh?

His apartment was on the 15th floor of the building.

With only cold bread and peanut butter in his belly, instead of the eggs and bacon he planned for breakfast, he descended too many stairs to count. Whilst on the last few steps of the final flight of stairs, Kenneth saw a man beginning to ascend them as well he was holding a cup of coffee and staring at his phone. Before Kenneth could say excuse me, the man slipped on something, and his coffee spilled all over Kenneth’s white work shirt.. Kenneth screamed at the burning liquid on his chest. It was just hot enough to hurt, yet not hot enough to cause anything to cause any real damage to anything but Kenneth’s shirt. The clumsy man apologized profusely, offering to buy him a new shirt and a million other empty gestures. But all Kenneth could think of was how long it would take to climb back up and all those stairs and change his shirt.

Not when the bus leaves in 8 minutes.

He made the mistake of choosing to wear an undershirt instead of a jacket. The brown stain on the substantial part of his white button-up shirt would do a great job advertising that mistake to the entire world. When Kenneth managed to escape that blunderer’s apologies with insincere reassurances, he hurried himself to the bus, cursing under his breath all the way.

It was a horrible day.

The commute to work had always felt more like a commute and a half ever since Kenneth got this job. The stares from passengers boarding the bus made the already long commute feel even longer. Eventually something more eye-catching happened on the road and the passengers’ attentions were fixed on that.

Up the road there was a motor vehicle collision. Far off into the distance the smoke from a burning collapsed truck filled the air as the truck itself filled the road. There was no driving around it, even without the police vehicles and ambulances on the road. The bus driver announced that they would have to change routes, which meant that their trip would take another thirty minutes.

Kenneth had the quietest tantrum possible. That would be the third time he was late in the last two weeks and the second time this week and it was only Wednesday.

It was a terrible day.

Just before he entered the building where the offices of Smithy’s and Co were located, Kenneth took a moment to try calm himself down.

“It was just a bad morning. It doesn’t have to be a bad day,” Kenneth muttered. It was almost as a prayer. It felt like today was punctuating a terrible month. Stress had its hands around his neck, and it was squeezing harder today. The voice from those phone calls he had gotten since he was released echoed in his mind.

“A man like you don’t deserve to live! You’ll get what you deserve!”

Kenneth shook off the memory.

It was only a bad morning. No need to make it worse thinking about that too.

“I’m not a coffee-drinking expert,” a voice beside him remarked, “but I’m fairly sure the goal is to get it into your mouth.”

The voice belonged to Thandi, his co-worker, and the best thing about working at Smithy’s.

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time someone pours it all over me,” he managed to say.

It was hard to not just stare at her sometimes. He had forgotten to respond when she spoke more than once when they first met, and God alone could judge him for it with her looking like that. She wore her classic pencil skirt, coloured button-up shirt combination, with beads on the ends of her shoulder length box-braids clinking with every motion.

“If you’re gonna be late, you should at least have taken the time to change your shirt or at least put a jacket over it.”

She poked the stained part of his shirt.

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the fashion whilst being on parole and all.”

That drew a genuine laugh from her, but the hope it stirred in him died with the reminder that she’s engaged. Her diamond engagement ring catching the light as she tried to stifle her laughter with her left hand.

The fact that she was comfortable enough around him to find humour in the fact that he was an ex-con was more than a win. Everyone at work knew that Kenneth was a former prisoner. His boss had made a point of letting everyone know. On his first day, Smith basically introduced him as Kenneth the Ex-convict to everyone in his department. The word spread through the office until he was sure everyone knew. The only person who asked what he went to prison for was Thandi, in fact that was how they began talking. Kenneth had told her it was reckless driving, and that was true to some extent. He did not plan to let anyone at work know any more than that, especially Thandi.

Kenneth walked Thandi to accounting department where was she worked on his way to his own workspace, the filing department. He was already behind on work from yesterday. The workload was pretty severe during this time of year, so it felt like he was behind by a whole weeks’ worth of work. On top of that, two other members of their department had been absent the entire week so today it had only been him and Victor in the department, and they had to pick up their slack.

No lunch break again today.

He had grown accustomed to working through lunch. Though the smells of Indian food being carried over to the computer engineering department threatened to distract him, managed to push away the temptation to take a break. Eventually, a bigger distraction came waltzing into his department’s door, one it betrayed his nature to ignore.

Thandi sat at Kenneth’s desk, facing him, and placed the Chinese takeout she had with her on top of the only place on the desk without papers or file or other stationery on it. She must have seen that he was busy so she kept to herself. Her own nature eventually betrayed her discipline.

“Do you have social media?” she asked, opening her lunch. The smell of beef and fried noodles littered the air.

“…Uh, no. Well, actually I do, but I don’t really use them mostly.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“It’s like…” Kenneth shuffled a file to the side and faced her. “It makes me feel like I’m in prison all over again. It makes me feel like we live in surveillance state but its voluntary so nobody seems to notice, and no one seems to be able to escape it whether you are online or not. Everyone’s being judged for everything they do, what they like, who they follow. It’s like we’ve copied all the worst aspects of East Asian Confuscian society but without all the benefits-”

“Whoa, okay. Save it for your pep talk. Sheesh. I just wanted to show some videos I came across recently.”

Kenneth sighed, already exhausted by the suggestion. He put his focus back on his work. Well, at least most of it. He could not help but humour Thandi a bit.

“Is this going to be one of those unfunny videos that coworkers show you were you feel pressured to laugh just to be polite?” he asked.

“I am that type of coworker to you, Kenneth?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t decided yet.”

“Ok, what if I could guarantee that you will at least find it interesting.”

“Is it a picture of Megan Fox in Fenty lingerie?”

“No.”

“Then I wouldn’t make that guarantee if I were you.”

A silence held between them whilst she chewed her chow mein but was broken again as after she swallowed.

“Ok, what if I threaten to tell HR that you sexually harassed me during lunch and that watching this was the only way to get me to not report you. Would you watch it then?”

That actually got Kenneth to put down his work for a moment and look Thandi in the eye. They held their usual playful glint.

“Okay, I’ll bite. When did I do that?”

“Just now.”

“Be more specific”

“Kenneth, you asked me to show pictures of half-naked women on my phone. Do you think that’s appropriate workplace behaviour? You heard him say that right Victor? You’ll be my witness, right?”

Victor only grunted in response.

“Huh, you got me there, Thandi.”

“Oh please, like that’s actually hard to do.”

Thandi pulled out her phone and after a few seconds of scrolling she faced the screen at him. On her Instagram was a video of a frustrated Kenneth with a coffee on his chest, grumbling to himself as he walked out of his apartment building.

“Wait, there’s more.”

Thandi showed him another two video of where he was throwing a fit. One where he was in the bus. Another was Kenneth outside this building, trying to collect himself when she approached him. In all the videos he looked frantic and ridiculous. What was more ridiculous were the likes on each of the posts. The one with the lowest number of likes was the third video Thando showed him with over two hundred thousand likes. There was a hashtag being repeated in the most popular comments under each video.

#MiserableMorningMan.

“Told ya it would interest you.”

The chair screeched as she rose from it. “Lunch’s over, I’ll have to see you later.”

He could only muster a weak goodbye as his phone sucked him in and held him for the rest of the day. Even on the bus home all he could do was scroll through comments. He was going viral everywhere. Twitter. Tiktok. Facebook. Everyone was talking about Miserable Morning Man in every language he could find. One Japanese post on Twitter with fifty thousand likes. Kenneth’s curiosity compelled him to press the translate button.

“This guy is so funny when he’s upset. I wish he would always have a bad day, and someone recorded it lol.”

The post alone made him uneasy, but the replies were much worse. People were inventing scenarios about how they could provoke him. Some even claimed they knew what suburb he lived in based on the bus he had taken…

Climbing fifteen flights of stairs was enough to make Kenneth collapse the moment he saw his bed. It gave him more comfort than anything else had that day...

Hopefully they’ll all forget about me tomorrow.

The morning brought more disappointments than just cold water.