CH 15: Fully Meets Backstory
CH 15: Fully Meets presents a confluence of forces converging upon McGhee and his reaction to them. I liked having them all impinge on McGhee at the same time because that crucible of pressure should feel familiar to readers, even if they haven’t quite experienced them all simultaneously. The pressures mentioned include his father’s health, the state of his career, and his relationship. Three biggies.
People milling on Market St. in San Francisco, near the offices of the mythical xCopy Inc. (think Xerox). Courtesy SF Chronicle.
From a relationship perspective, we don’t get much information here – the pressure manifests as a printed email in his pocket from his GF Kate indicating “they need to talk.” By this point in the novel we know they got together and it appeared they broke up, before getting together again, though we don’t know the details of the breakup. We get a bit more on that in CH 17: Soldier’s Wounds.
Regarding his father’s health, we don’t know much about their relationship at this point. We’ve had a better glimpse into his mother in CH 2: Never Far Enough, but less so on his father. We get more on his paternal relationship in the next chapter, CH 16: The Boney Pile, so this foreshadows that a bit, and the next after that, CH 17: Soldier’s Wounds.
Courtesy “Office Space” 20th Century Fox.
As for McGhee’s career, it remains the focus of this chapter which represents an inflection point in his professional life. We know he has been ambivalent about "cubicle work" at least since his Alaska days, and at this point he's been doing it 5+ years. I’ve always had an uneasy relationship myself with conventional employment, so this was an opportunity for a personal Festivus, as in, the airing of grievances. Key to this was the performance review process and subjugation to questionable authority, but the general tone of this piece is captivity and is shone in various details. His ultimate freedom at the end is reflected by his toes, now free of the tyranny of his wingtips.
I should mention that none of the managers I’ve ever had were prototypes for Jerry, though there were a few glimpses here and there. Some of the details, such as the display of Jerry’s soles on the edge of his desk, were genuine observations I made during my time of servitude (it's rather rude in my opinion, at least during a review). I must confess this section was distasteful to write as it brought back unpleasant memories, though I’m not sure I ever suffered the indignity of an FM rating (but I may be blotting it out). Lots of the details -- from the messy cubicle to the odd neighbor and the smoking outside were genuine recollections from one time or another. I think particularly young readers (late teens to early 20s) will resonate with this depiction of typical "office space" type work -- hence the picture above.
While there are some bright spots, such as Olga (who is a real and delightful person BTW), generally the situation is painted as making the best of miserable circumstances. That said, much of this misery is self-imposed by McGhee and is entirely in his own head. He pretty much knows he’s doing the wrong thing with his life and is gathering the resolve to do something about it. I liken it to the decision, while nauseated, to stick one’s finger down one’s throat. It’s that kind of, “it’ll get worse before it gets better” moment in his life.
