Mr. Carelessy
A Story of Ordinary Administration

Mr. Carelessy starts his week-day with his head in the clouds.
Yesterdy night he could not sleep a wink because of the usual insomnia that is persecuting him.
Moreover he has thousands of thoughts about certain payments in expiration, among them the loan, what a nightmare !
Today as well the tube is crowded to such a degree that he gets off breathless and with his face moist with perspiration. He is late and, as it wasn't enough, it is raining. Certainly, this is not the right way to start a day, but that is how it is!
Walking at a good pace he gets ready to enter the building where his office is located.
He resolutely opens the
entrance door and hurridely runs the stairs leading to his room.
His roomate has already arrived from a few minutes and is engrossed in work.
Carelessy greetings him absent-mindedly, then he takes off his overcoat and places the dripping umbrella.
"What I need is a good hot coffee" he thinks to himself and at once he opens a locker and pulls out a
hot plate, a coffee-pot and what is necessary to prepare the longed for drink.
Fortified by the first cup of coffee of the morning, he lies himself down on a wheel-chair, getting ready for work.
However, before starting working, he has to arrange the documents he needs and bring the pen in the drawer.Once he has placed all the things over the desk, he turns on the
computer, whose video is vaguely lightened by a sunray that's making its way through the clouds, and he settles the keyboard behind the documents.
After two hours of continuous work at the computer, our friend needs to stretch his legs and
smoke a cigarette.
Maybe his colleague upstairs can tell him some amusing stories to entertain him during the ten minutes of the psycho-physical recovery. So he decides to call on him.
When he goes upstairs he searches for his colleague's room, but he has some difficulties in finding it because
the passages are so cluttered up with any kind of furniture that he can't even read the labels on the doors.
Suddenly the lights turn off leaving the floor in the dark.
After several minutes the situation is back to normal and Carelessy at least manages to reach his colleague.
The latter, however, instead of telling him an amusing story, asks him to lend him a hand in placing some boxes over a piece of furniture in the room.
As they are both in a hurry, Carelessy approaches a ladder next to the locker as well as he can, induces his colleague to climb on it and starts giving him the boxes.
The pause ending in a different way from what he had dreamt of, our friend comes back to work in his room where the telephone starts ringing: his boss is asking him a copy of some important documents.
Carelessy immediately brings the documents and goes making some photostats in a narrow and windowless room. While he is turning on the machine, he realizes that the toner is missing.
Therefore he starts removing the exhausted cartridge, then throws it away in the bin and replaces it with a new one. After that, he makes the photostats and goes straight away to his boss.
Before coming back to his room, however, he peeps in the
archives to search for a document which is necessary to him to finish his work.
But in the archives the search is hard because the
lighting is missing and a complete mess reigns.
Unfortunately, our friend Carelessy is also suffering from allergy at dust, so we can easily understand the discomfort he is feeling.
By now, the working day is almost over: it's time to bring the pass lunch and go and eat a light meal before coming back to work in the afternoon.
Only the time to go to
the bathroom and then away to the usual snack-bar.
The afternoon begins with better premises: the wind has swept away the clouds and the sun is shining brightly.
But in the office the situation is not so comfortable: the
temperature is now low. Carelessy feels like he is freezing, maybe the timer or the thermoregulator have broken down .
So our friend has to take out of his wardrobe an old electric heater and places it beside his desk. At least he starts feeling better!
After several minutes, when Carelessy is absorbed in his work again, the boss calls for him. When he is out of his room, and is colleague is out as well, an unexpected event occurs; the electric heater starts burning, due to a short circuit.
The
fire spreads quickly burning the bin and the documents on the desk. The smoke immediately saturates the passages.
When the employees realize the danger, they are panic-struck and starts running away confusedly.
It is difficult to see one's way in the chaos: the situation is worsened by the presence of furniture in the passages and of some people who do not know the dislocation of the emergency exits.
Uselessly they search for a direction or for someone assigned to the evacuation.
Someone stumbles, someone is trampled, others fall along the staircase, in the attempt to gain the exit.
When the emergency has passed, thanks to the intervantion of firemen, they count the
injured ones and argue about the responsibilities, the security in the office and the undertaking that all that is happened must not happen anymore.