Sensitivity Training

*This train will stop at… Wynyard*

I pocket my phone and rise from my seat in the carriage, knees creaking a little, and climb the stairs to toward the exit to join the growing throng of other passengers there. We all brace in a united, automatic reflex as the train comes to a slow halt at the platform. The less practised passengers shift with a start to regain their balance while holding tight to their luggage — tourists taking the train the long way around to the airport.

Marching in a kind of syncopated lock-step I move with the other passengers through the doors after they’ve finished their hissing parting. I turn right and head up the stairs, quietly navigating passengers heading in the opposite direction as they attempt to break through the steady flow on the landing part-way up.

Summiting the stairs the atmosphere suddenly shifts — the station itself is light and filled with hive-like activity in comparison to the compulsory jostle and flow of the platform and stairways. With more freedom to move here, I break away, my sense of pedestrian traffic slowing and quickening my step to avoid collisions as I move toward the turnstiles. I fish my Opal card from my pocket and touch it to the receiver, barely registering the ding of acknowledgement from the gate over the din of my headphones.

As the gates open I move through, turning slightly as I do to avoid getting caught in its beartrap grip as it closes behind me. To my right I see a tall, rail-thin man in a tailored suit wrestling with an overloaded suitcase that has not fared so well as I. He grunts with frustration as he attempts to free the bag, passengers behind coming to a halt and staring indifferently at the situation. They are all savvy enough to know that while tapping one of their Opal cards to the receiver will open the gate and release him, it is unlikely they will themselves make it out unscathed in the process. He is on his own.

I move quickly past and join a slightly looser flow of people moving through the accessway toward the shining monument of the escalators to the surface — surely the pride of a state politician in a photo op when they were first installed. I step deftly onto the moving surface of the machine’s teeth, stretch my neck a little while standing stationary as I am carried upward. I always take the right-most escalator so that when I alight I have less pedestrian traffic to cross when I exit — I’m not heading immediately to the surface like most people.

As I reach the summit I preemptively lift my right foot a little — a habit from my childhood meant to prevent all of the incidents that ran through my grandmother’s head and fuelled her irrational fear of the devices. Having no such fear, the movement only serves to test my timing as I step off the now shrinking tooth and out onto the worked stone parquetry. A hairpin right turn sees me divert from the loose pack of people heading toward the second escalator set which lead to the surface. I double back around to the right and through a pedestrian access that I’ve always thought half-finished and begin the descent toward the lower street on the back side of the city block.

In a well-practised movement, I make an abrupt turn to the right and snake my way past lined up customers milling in the narrow entrance to the coffee shop. Barely slowing, I scan the counter ahead for my order — I placed it via an app on my phone from the train two stops ago. Spying my name on the receipt slip resting on top of the familiar stack of brown-paper-bag-and-coffee-cup I pick it all up in one movement.

“Thanks!” I say with a nod to the barista who returns the gesture while heating milk in a metal jug.

I head directly down the stairs to the street level exit and level the door open with my foot, the cool May air immediately clinging to my face welcomingly. I am only truly alive in the cooler months.

Two more right turns and I find myself needing to navigate a vehicle exiting the building’s parking levels. I duck past the descending boom gate and down the ramp toward the elevators, pressing the call button at the end. The wait for these elevators is always too long. Only half of the bank of machines descends to the parking levels so there is a computer somewhere no doubt whose job it is to figure out how to efficiently accommodate. I don’t think it is doing a good job and I wonder if I could figure out how to improve it.

*DING*

The right elevator call light activates and the doors slide apart to permit me. An empty lift is a blessed moment of silence and I watch the screen indicating the progress of my ascent saying a silent prayer that it will not stop at ground level. It doesn’t and I heave a sigh of relief, closing my eyes and breathing in the quiet and stillness of a space that is entirely mine to inhabit for exactly 32 seconds — a gift.

My ascent slows and the car comes to a halt at my floor. I step out into the echo of the hall and turn right (a lot of right turns), making my way toward the glass door bearing the familiar logo of my employer. I struggle a little freeing my wallet from my right trouser pocket before waving it in front of the security sensor which beeps loudly twice in recognition.

I push the door open with my knuckles and foot, letting it fall closed behind me, and make the right turn toward my desk. The glass observatory that is the boardroom is filled to overflowing with members of teams that are not my own at this point, an early Monday sales meeting. Nobody notices my entry.

I see my team across the divider from my desk at the back of the open office space and make no attempt to minimise my entry though none of them seems to notice me anyway. They are engaged in conversation, laughing raucously, my supervisor with his face in his hands in a gesture indicating that the topic of conversation is incredulous at best.

I set my bag and breakfast down on my desk and tug the earbuds from their homes either side of my head.

“I didn’t know you had a sister Andy *— is she hot?” Michael* says with a sleazy tone to his voice.

The group all issue a chorus of faux derision in unison, laughing all the while — Michael is married and a renown lecher.

A sly smile reaches Michael’s face as he waits for a lull in the noise — the timing of his next comment is important if he is aiming for maximum impact.

“Actually, more importantly… does she swallow?” Michael redoubles before himself collapsing into laughter.

Thomas* shouts “What!?” before standing to pace back and forth in his laughter, the rest of the team incapacitated by their amusement.

The laughter trails off into tittering as I silently take my seat at my desk and open my laptop on the surface. The tone of the office commentary while obviously shocking is unfortunately as routine to me at this stage as the rest of my navigation to the office from the train. I feel the war going on inside my head — the losing war I fight with my self-imposed restraint — and I transfer my earbuds from my phone to my computer, return them to my ears and hit play. Someone else’s articulated thoughts echo into my mind and slowly drown out the sound of the wounding I am doing to myself by biting my tongue and curtailing my personality. The Big Voice will undoubtedly win anyway because I have lost sight of the tools to help the Little Voice triumph, so it is easier to ignore the whole affair.

This is my work day, it’s 9:15 am and the tone has been set. Only 9 more hours until I can leave.

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