Footnote — A Guildenstern Monologue

This task assigned by Dilip Barad.

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Guildenstern — Modern Corporate Monologue

(He stands by the glass wall of a conference room. A mug in his hand reads “OPTIMIZE.” He watches a slideshow of org charts tumble like falling cards.)

They called a meeting. Always “a meeting.” As if a verb could settle anything. We filed in — Rosencrantz with his tie on straight, me practicing a nod — and someone at the top said, “We need to right-size.” Right-size. A delicate euphemism for making us smaller, for turning whole lives into line-items on a quarterly slide.

What am I? A role on a rota? A headcount to be adjusted? They bookmarked my name in an email chain once — “Please advise on Guildenstern” — and the advise they wanted was not advice at all but confirmation: will you be useful when the numbers are tight? Will you absorb more tasks for less pay? Will you disappear quietly if the balance sheet requires it?

You learn to speak the language. “KPIs,” “deliverables,” “scalability.” You paste them into sentences like talismans, hoping they’ll turn power toward you. But words here are currency, and I have none. I can nod and say “synergy” and “bandwidth,” and still feel the old, familiar hollow — the sensation of being background noise beneath a CEO’s inhalation.

Rosencrantz says, “Just play along.” He thinks it’s a script, a schedule — mimicry will save us. But whose script? For every task assigned there is the unseen hand that types the margin note: expendable. Like a sponge, someone said once. Absorb the leaks, then be wrung. Useful until dried. Useful until the meeting ends.

There is a form for that. A checklist: return laptop, clear email, hand over keys. They package the exit in tidy boxes and stock the cafeteria with consolation snacks. We learn the choreography of being dismissed — the polite hug, the HR slide thanking you for “contributions.” Contributions. The word sounds like an afterthought in a budget report.

And yet — what is this grief? It is not only for the job. It is for the lines I never had a chance to speak. For the moments in the corridor when I felt the world tilt and no one noticed. For the questions I ask that land like paper planes in a vacant hall. Who writes the narrative? Who holds the pen while the rest of us clap on cue?

Sometimes at night I replay the town-hall, the CEO’s smile like a pageant prop, and I whisper to the ceiling: if we are merely tools, what does it mean to be useful? If life is productivity measured in deliverables, where do we hide our doubts? Where do we file our small rebellions?

Rosencrantz will find a new desk. He will wear a different badge. I will probably be somewhere between elevators, between memos — an asterisk in the annual report. But listen: asterisks point to footnotes. And footnotes keep secrets. If nothing else, we will remain footnotes — marginal, yes, but present. And presence, in a room that never really looks, is a kind of witness.

(He sets the mug down. The slide clicks to black. He turns, and for a heartbeat he is not a line on a page but someone waiting to ask: who, in this business of being small, will answer back?)

Thank You!!!