Work Text:
Dr. Charles Talbot has been transferred to replace Dr. Gavin Olen after the latter’s retirement. The state of Dr. Olen’s office shocked Talbot on his first day. Despite being quite large, the room had no rhyme or reason in the layout. The room looked two stories tall and about 3 rooms wide. Bookshelves lined every wall, each one almost touching the ceiling. The room’s mess looked nearly impressive due to the minimum amount of furniture in the large room. A couch and chair are placed in the back left corner, a sturdy oak desk in the opposite corner, and two cheaper plastic desks are randomly placed in the middle of the room. The floor, desks, and shelves littered with different papers, notebooks, notepads, files, and boxes. Rather than focus on the mess today, he walked into the office and decided he should start somewhere to assess the situation. Finding a box under one of the cheaper boxes, he gets to work.
Talbot left the office late at night, not noticing how fast time passed when working during the day. He headed to his new apartment, in hopes of eating something and getting some rest. Once he arrived, turning the light on as he entered, he grabbed an apple from the kitchen and walked into the living room, where he still had some unopened boxes lying out. His apartment is small, having an attached kitchen and living room with a small hallway with a bedroom, and a bathroom. The pile of unpacked boxes made the space even smaller than the apartment advertised. Talbot walked to the pile of brown moving boxes and started to search for his box full of stationery.
After looking for a few moments, Talbot found the box. Taking out some stacks of paper and other repeat items to make room in the box. Setting the extra supplies on the nearby kitchen counter, he organized the box to be able to add more items. Moving away from the box, Talbot walked into the kitchen and opened one of the overhanging cabinets. He grabbed a small roll of trash bags, some of his broken-down moving boxes, and a box cutter from inside the cabinet. He walked back to the open box, throwing away an apple core as he passed the trash, and placed the items neatly into the box. Deciding he prepared enough for tomorrow, Talbot removed his shoes in the living room and walked to the bedroom, turning the light off as he left.
Entering his room, Talbot walked to his bedside table to turn on the glass lamp sitting next to a phone charger. Talbot starts to get ready for bed, changing his business casual outfit for a more comfortable grey shirt two sizes too large and a matching pair of soft sweatpants. Sitting down on the side of his bed, he plugs in his phone and checks his many alarms for the morning. Turning off the lamp on the table, Talbot lies down on his bed, slowly drifting off to sleep.
In the morning, Talbot woke up to the sound of his alarm on his phone. Groggily, he sits up in bed and reaches to the bedside table to turn off his alarm. He doesn’t make any other movements for the next couple of minutes, staring at the wall in front of him. When a couple more minutes pass, another alarm goes off, and Talbot groans. Finally getting up, he turns off his phone and leaves to start his day. Over thirty minutes, Talbot takes a shower, gets dressed in an older outfit without any emotional value, makes his bed, and eats breakfast. Soon after he finishes eating and places his plate in the sink, another alarm goes off on his phone. Almost on cue, Talbot grabs the box from the kitchen counter from last night. Being ready for work, Talbot left his apartment with the box, turning off the lights and locking the door behind him.
Once Talbot arrived at the office building, he entered, looking out for any security or the supposed janitor. Walking through the building, he saw no one, and honestly didn’t believe a janitor could be on staff with the mess of Dr. Olen’s office. Entering the retired man’s office, Talbot turned on the light and saw the mess the same as the previous day. Walking over to the cheap desk, he placed the box in his arms next to the box of files from yesterday. Rather than recording another file today, he needed to organize the mess in some way to make future filing easier. Opening the box, he brought with him, Talbot takes out trash bags, a hole punch, folders, 3-ring binders, dividers, sticky notes, Sharpies, painter’s tape, his box cutter, and a couple of notebooks. With all his supplies laid out, Talbot pulled out a Clear Minds tape recorder and pressed record. In a calm and monotone voice, Talbot starts to speak, “Dr. Charles Talbot recording for Clear Minds Inc. Outpatient Therapy Division, internal records. Date, July 6th, 2022. Once again faced with the task of Dr. Gavin Olen’s office. I have decided without help, the best course of action would be to organize the room into smaller tasks. Today I plan to through out any trash and gather different files with similarities. I’m currently working on an organization system in my free time to help with the mess.”
Clicking the recorder off, Talbot started by opening a trash bag and going around the room. For an hour, he throws away any blank sheets of loose paper, random plastic, pieces of cardboard, and all the other items in the room he believed to be disposable. As he walked through the room, he also picked up any notepads or books off the floor and placed them on the nearby shelves lining the room walls. Having two trash bags full and no more books on the ground, Talbot walks back to the cheap desk. Talbot turns the recorder on, leaving it running this time, and makes an update, “Removing the trash in the room did little to tackle the mass of this mess. At the very least, no more books are lying about.”
Talbot struts to the other side of the desk and sits in a nearby chair. He starts to sort through loose pages in the vicinity of the desk. Glancing at the various pages and sorting through similar ones into piles. Clear Minds mainly hired Dr. Talbot due to his ability to follow paper trails, so over time, piles started to form.
Once his general area was clear of loose papers and files, Talbot started to hole-punch each pile and place them into three-ring binders. After labeling all the binders, he grabbed one of the broken-down boxes and placed all the binders into the box. The repetitive motions went on for a while before he completed the small area. He placed all three boxes —the new binder box, the box he brought from home, and the box labeled ‘CM-X-1088-AE’ — behind him against the messy bookshelf. Arriving back at the desk, he continued to organize the stationery he brought with him. Placing the Sharpies and box cutter in the tape roll and placing the hole punch in the corner of the desk. The sticky notes, notebooks, and extra binders are being placed in the corner of the desk. After Talbot finished, the cheap desk looked like a proper work area. Looking at his watch, Talbot noticed how much time had passed and quickly got ready to leave. Signing out the recording, he states his final thought, “I managed to get a minuscule part of the office presentable. I will most likely start recording transcripts again tomorrow. This is the best I can do as a one-man team with limited time. Maybe if I ask for help again from Clear Mind, they will respond more quickly.”
He clicks the recorder off and leaves, turning the lights off and locking up the building as he heads home. The trip home seemed quite normal, one of the last normal days Dr. Charles Talbot would have for the next few months. For the next few months are going to feel like hell.