Wednesday, 2nd of November 2016, Headquarters of the International Police, Athens
“You are late.” If those are the first words of your boss, run. Actually, I worry much less than I should, because he seems really relaxed. His “Don’t worry be happy cup” is there to say that he either is a sympathetic guy or it is supposed to hide the dark shadow behind him. His desk is brimming of symmetry and perfection. It could have been one of a maths teacher or an art project with the title “Symmetry in everyday life”.
His office however tells me, that he is a psychopath. No windows, shelves or plants. The search for any personal belongings leads to a dead end.
I thought maybe everything is glued to its place and start shuffling around with the black armchair, that is intended for visitors and dismissal talks. I get rewarded with the insight that I’m wrong and two mean looks by Toby and the boss.
“Tobias Walter Winter,” he raises his eyes to him, “and Marcos Karafoulidis. Right?” The boss emotionless gaze stops its journey on me. “Yes, it’s nice to meet you.” Unsure, because of his silence I add a “Sir”. Mr. Perfect is searching I his drawer until he finds what he was looking for. A little red plastic basket, with unknown content, changes the exhibitions name to “Things that mess up a tidy desk”.
“Same here.” He glances over me.
One after another he takes out the objects and distributes them to the corners of the desk where their new owners are seated.
“Key: Office 7, Car Key: Car 7, post office box: 7, warrant card, gun, liabilities, our directive, when you’re on a mission you can speak over the headset with each other on channel 7, if you are the officers in charge as Team No. 7. Maik our IT-Expert can tell you more about it. Any other questions? Don’t ask me.” I look over to Toby, but he just shrugs his shoulders.
We hastily give him our certificate and before I could even finish my question, if he’s allowed to give us the guns without seeing our licences, he says “yes” and waves goodbye.
Only after the door closes magically behind us I can feel the tension fall from my shoulders. Instantly I notice how empty it is up here. I see nobody. Next to the door of each room there is a sign placed with the room number and names.
We’re searching for our room until we find it in the back on the opposite side.
You can imagine the upper floor as follows:
The front and back are made of white walls with some still life photography hung upon it. At each of the other two sides are five rooms, right the even numbers and the odd numbers to the left. The boss’s office is at the end of the hallway, exactly where you would expect it, still hard to find though. I can imagine, according to what I saw from the outside, that each office has windows with a view over Athens.
In the middle there is a seating area and coffee machines. A few steps aside there is a multifunction device, for scanning, printing, copying, faxing and that thing can probably do massages as well. Every room is separated from the hallway by opaque class.
That’s why we saw the welcoming committee only after it was standing right in front of us.
Our colleagues from the international police had backed a cake, ugly hats on their head and an old banner with colourful letters that say “happy welcome”.
However, they look a little annoyed, presumably because they expected us at eight and it's half past ten already.
“We’re sorry for being late.”, I say after my surprise has faded. We lift our hands as an apology and at the same time to prevent them from strangling us. Instead the fling their arms around our necks and one after another gives us a hug. It reminds me of the birthdays in my flat share, hugs filled with trust loyalty, friendship and love.
We don’t know any of them – though two of them seem familiar from the job application poster - they don’t know us, but they accept us like old friends.
After we freed ourselves the oldest one greets us formally, he looks like he is in his mid-fifty’s or maybe even sixty, but I don’t want to misjudge. He looks fit and healthy, which is raising my chances of survival in this job.
“Welcome! We are sorry for taking you by surprise. My name is Eric and I would say”, he turns around to the others “we first choose one to show and explain everything to them.”
It seems like we are leaving a positive impression, because everyone’s hands go up and by that, I mean that some lift both of their hands.
“Good, I think Janis and Galen should do it, since they are the old new ones.” Indeed, these two are the ones from the poster. I beseech that no one demands Toby and me to do something like this. A woman in the last row asks if we could introduce ourselves shortly. Next to me I notice Toby subside in his posture. He has a big problem with unknown people and unimportant thing, the reason why he only talks when it’s necessary or he needs attention. Apparently, it is unimportant to tell our future colleagues his life story.
I start: “My name is Marcos. 24 years old. I grew up here and life in a flat share community. My parents divorced when I was thirteen, I like to play music and that’s all interesting about me so far. It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”
After a short breathing time I continue with Toby’s part which surprises him unkindly. “This is Tobias. 23. Single.”
“Okay.” One of our new babysitters agreed. “I am Galen. You will learn the other names as time passes. Let’s start with the guide tour!” He turns to the door, before he opens it a shout of protest sound out of all mouths. A man with a bottle in his hand points to the cake. “We should’t forget about the cake and ouzo.” One of the women joins the conversation and shakes her head. “Robert, you know we are not allowed to bring alcohol to our working place.”
“Ah, come one, everyone a shot, we’ve got something to celebrate.” Robert looks like he had occasionally taken one shot to much.
“No, I don’t want to leave a bad impression. We are eating cake now!”
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