Robert Gerard Hunt Stories. Commentary. Endorphins. Updated every Friday.

A Strange Case

105?  There must be some significance to that combination...

It's been ten years since I left the business world for a career in education.  A decade is an apt interval for reflection, for that is precisely how long I spent in the private sector.  As a fresh college graduate in the spring of 1990, I turned my part-time job with a small records management company into a sustaining occupation.  Eventually I was given a salary and entrusted with running the micrographics department.  If the notion of storing data on microfilm seems quaint today, the inevitability of a digital future was obvious even then.  By the end of the nineties, it was long past due to move on.

Although few mementos remain from that period of my life, I recently exhumed the most substantial relic of my business days:  a briefcase.  It was resting in the corner of my basement underneath a six-disc CD player, a pair of plastic aquariums, a slim wooden case containing a decorative carving knife, and an assortment of small items that accumulated there during the latest attempt at organization.  After carefully removing the precariously balanced upper archaeological layer, I was able to retrieve this artifact from my past in order to examine it closely.

My old briefcase is of the classic model:  black, hardshell, with gold-finish latches and a hefty, swiveling handle.  In other words, it's a completely impractical piece of luggage for most purposes.  Foremost among its detriments is its considerable weight, even when empty.  With no shoulder strap to help bear the load, the average professional is likely to experience carpal tunnel onset just lugging the thing from the parking lot to the office.  Heaven forbid it should be filled with documents.

The bulky carrying device, far heavier than its potential contents, is a throwback to a time of macho corporate suffering when ergonomics was for sissies.  Look around today as people scurry to their office jobs and conferences, and you'll see plenty of shoulder bags, leather portfolios tucked under wing, and rolling cases pulled by telescoping handles.  The traditional, hardshell briefcase offers only two advantages:  it provides a secure and nearly indestructible portable home for vital documents, and it makes its carrier look important.  Hey, that guy must be somebody - he's carrying a briefcase!

As I beheld my briefcase for the first time in years, a mild anxiety crept up on me.  Each of the two latches was secured to a three-digit combination lock.  Not only had I forgotten the method by which the custom combinations were set, but also I could not remember what numbers I had chosen.  My childhood street address sprang to mind as a possibility, and I was just about to dial it up when it occurred to me that perhaps the current configuration was, in fact, the secret code.  Why would I have bothered to advance the numbers if I was merely putting my briefcase away at home?  Yet the displayed digits - 105 on the left latch and 107 on the right - had no significance for me at all.  Still, better to give it a try.  I pushed my thumbs against the release mechanisms, and thwack!  The latches popped open.  It would be a full day later before my brain would recover the cryptic meaning of 105 and 107 :  the simulcast FM frequencies of a long-gone local radio station.

To my surprise, the briefcase would not open.  I gripped the handle with my left hand and tried to use the fingernails of my right hand to pry the lid loose along the seam, but it was as if the latches had never been released.  After several unsuccessful attempts, I looked furtively around the basement for something I might be able to force into the tiny seam and use as a lever.  Coming up with nothing, I made one final, desperate effort, and finally the seal was broken and the briefcase flew open.

The contents were as disappointing as Al Capone's vault.  The central compartment was empty, and a trio of cheap ballpoints was stuck in the pen holder.  Reaching down into the pockets, I discovered the business card of an old client, plus the last stash of my own business cards.  That was it - no amusing memos, no meeting notes with creative doodling in the margins, no forgotten currency.  I stared at the vacant interior and wondered why I had ever wanted a briefcase in the first place.

I suppose I thought I needed one, just as I felt it necessary to wear a suit and tie when I was made to go on sales calls.  It seemed much more professional to arrive at the office of a potential client with my proposal secure within a briefcase rather than showing up carrying a cheap manila folder.  A briefcase afforded one the opportunity of ritual:  the careful placement of the briefcase upon a boardroom table, the satisfyingly aggressive percussion of opening latches, the subtle whiff of leather, the procurement of anticipated documents from a mysterious vessel that might contain the portfolios of several dozen much more important prospects.  It was all smoke and mirrors, as I found much of the business world to be.

I took the briefcase as my carry-on luggage on the rare occasions when my employer flew me off somewhere in the name of keeping up with the latest industry trends and networking with promising partners and suppliers.  I had it with me in Deerfield Beach, Florida, where a comparatively large micrographics firm was hosting a small convention for like-minded businesses.  The host company went all-out to impress everyone by chauffeuring us by limousine from the hotel to a tour of their facility, followed by dinner, drinks, steel-band music, and general schmoozing aboard a yacht cruising the Intracoastal Waterway.

I had never been in a limousine before, and the experience was odd.  Sitting next to the window, I was clearly the youngest and most inexperienced, a mere proxy of my employer among a group of confident small-business owners.  They laughed easily and were cordial toward me, but I felt like an alien.  They were all about growing their businesses and making more money.  I was thinking about how unrewarding I was finding my occupation.  I certainly wasn't making a great deal of money, and the best I could say about the service I provided was that I indirectly helped other companies in their quest to be profitable by allowing them to efficiently archive records.  It seemed rather pointless.  It absolutely was dull.

As our limo glided to a stop at a busy intersection, I gazed out the window and saw a rusted landscaping truck pull up in the adjacent lane.  A crew of dark-skinned day laborers crowded the open bed, their tattered clothes as dirty as the shovels they carried.  They stared at our limousine and laughed as they pointed toward us, perhaps speculating what VIP might be beyond the black-tinted windows.  I stared back at them, knowing I could not be seen.  They appeared to be on the way back from a long day's work.  I was headed for a business dinner on a yacht.  The light changed and we moved on, but I was haunted by what I had seen.  No one else in the limousine seemed to notice.

The next afternoon, I dutifully stuffed my briefcase with convention literature before flying home.  Snapping the latches shut, I pondered how much longer I would be making a living in the business world.  Maybe one day I would have the chance to do something meaningful.

HackingEthics