Working in the cube farm fielding customer service calls made Mark feel like a rat. Grey, carpeted cube walls looked like a rat maze in some mad laboratory where the experiment was how much boredom the rats could take before killing themselves. Everyone lived for breaks, official or stolen. Minutes without a call were precious. Bathroom breaks were extended as long as was possible without looking suspicious. Breaks were the call agents' cheese.
Mark shuffled towards his cubicle, inside right, third in, fourth from the end. There were no decorations allowed and the grey was unrelenting. The panels were supposed to block sound, but they didn't fully function, quite like the customer service agents. Mark's work clothes were wrinkled, grey and ill-fitting. He had ironed them for his first week before realizing the futility of the effort. Nobody cared, least of all Mark.
If anyone had looked up from their own cubes, they could have seen Mark's head and shoulders bobbing past. His hair was mostly dark though streaked with grey on the sides. It was always too long. Whenever he got it cut, he looked uncomfortable until it grew shaggy again. The longer it got, the curlier it became and the tips poked his eyes giving him a twitch when he shook it away. There was only one shirt he owned that wasn't stained, but it was lost in his apartment, and he had forgotten about it.
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