The women I work with are vile creatures. They are cruel. They like to gossip about everyone and each other. They keep tabs on how many times you've gone to the bathroom, or whether or not you've worn the same shirt twice in a week. If your breath stinks, you will know. They will not tell you, but you will catch them snickering to each other after they've spoken to you, waving their hands in front of their faces as if still catching bursts of the smell. It's enough to make a man paranoid. When I wake up I now worry about the kind of clothing that I wear. I shower a few extra times a week. I have bought odor eaters for my shoes, even though they do not smell. I cover my mouth when I eat. I make sure to wear cologne now, and to carry a pack of mints on me. These women have nothing better going on in their lives other than this job.

They seem to take it out on the men the most. There are no male clerks at my job, and this is a problem. Most of the men at my job have master's degrees while these women barely graduated high school. If you talk to them, if you mention work or something that you disagree with it is discrimination. They threaten to call in the administration. They threaten to call the secret hotline. The whole place works according to their schedule, to when they can pick up their kids and make it in, or when they want to go on lunch. I am the supervisor in this hell. I came into it with all of those practices in place. And I do not care enough about the job to change them. I do not care at all. I just want my paycheck. I want to pass through the day without any major calamity. I want to retire but the bill collectors and student loan people tell me that I have many more years of this torture to endure.

Bill is the main focus of their terror. Bill is hitting sixty. He doesn't really do anything on the job, and I don't really care that he does. He's a body to me. He's there to cover desks, to work Saturdays so that the rest of us do not have to work too many of them. Bill takes up space. This isn't good enough for the cackling hens. No. They must report to me every infraction that he makes on the job. Bill is playing solitaire on the computer again. Bill is sitting in the back reading. Bill spends too much time on the shitter. He took an extra ten minutes on lunch. He left the building to run across the street for coffee. The list is endless. These ladies want to know what I'm going to do about it. I tell them I'll handle it. But I don't. I just don't have it in me to yell at a guy who wants another cup of coffee. Most of the time I wish I were Bill, taking an extra ten minutes on lunch, or playing a few games of solitaire. Solitaire sounds much more preferable to listening to these bitches complain all day.

Bill smells. He has a musty odor like he doesn't wash his clothing. The women tell me that it's piss. I don't smell the piss on him. Maybe they have more experience with smelling piss than I do. You see, Bill has it bad. His wife of twenty-five years left him three years ago. He's never recovered from it. He's tried to kill himself twice. Pills. He spends his day, when not playing solitaire or sneaking out for a gratuitous cup of coffee, looking up his ex-wife on the computer. I know this because Bill doesn't clear his computer history. Bill has lost the will to live, or so I've been told. He's a zombie now they told me when I started the job. Don't ask much of Bill. Bill is damaged.

That's fine and I accept this notion of Bill the broken man. I listened to all of their stories about him, and I empathized with his situation. I left him alone. I thought this was the standard. Obviously they were just waiting for a sap like me to show up, some fresh blood, to pounce. There hasn't been a week that I've been in this jail that one of these cackling beasts hasn't come into my office complaining about the smell of Bill. They demand that something be done about him, or else they'll call the administration. The administration. These veiled people who sit on the third floor at the central office. I am to be scared of them. I've seen most of the administration. They are dumpy and sad. Some of them stink as well. And I'm supposed to be scared of these people? Of these threats?

Go ahead and get the administration I want to tell them. Call the private hotline. Do your worst. Get me fired and out of this hell once and for all. I'll go back to the warehouses. I'll go back to the temp agencies and wine stores. I don't care. Anything is better than discussing a man's body odor, his sad, pathetic, shattered life, his breath, his bowel movements, and everything else. Cleaning up dog shit on the side of the street is better than this. What these women don't get is that they are no better. I've smelled their breath. I've been in the bathroom after they've taken a shit. I've noticed when they wear the same shirt two days out of the week. I've seen each and every hair they've forgotten to shave underneath their arms, or on their lips. I've seen the gray that they've forgotten to dye.

"This time you have to do something about this," Geraldine says. She's standing in the doorway of my office with her too tight jeans, her black top that makes her tits look bigger, and her little potbelly sticking out. She is fifty but she dresses like a twenty year old. She is the office know-it-all, the ringleader who gets all of the other women going. I was reading an online newspaper before she came in. I have a nice cup of coffee and a buttered bagel sitting next to me. I made the mistake of being twenty minutes early for work. I didn't know Geraldine was in this early. I think to myself that I really need to start checking the schedule better.

"About what?" I say, stupidly.

"About Bill!" she screams. "He stinks! I can't handle it anymore. None of us can. If you don't do anything I'm calling the hotline this time. You can make damned sure that I am."

"What would you like me to do?" I ask. "I've already spoken to my boss about Bill." This was true. I sat in a forty-minute meeting discussing this man's scent. My boss even went and sat next to Bill at the desk while he worked. She didn't smell anything, she said. She said that Bill smelt like a man. She told me not to worry about these women anymore. She told me to document it. I have a word file labeled "smell," that I update nearly once a week.

Fred walks in the office. Fred is my direct supervisor. He travels from branch to branch overseeing what I do. I like Fred but not because he's a great guy. I like Fred because he isn't Kevin. Kevin is the other supervisor who visits me. Kevin has OCD. He's obsessed with the schedule. He follows me around holding the schedule and talking about the schedule. Kevin monopolizes the computer in the office. He opens dozens of emails and reads them over and over again all day when he's not discussing the schedule. Fred doesn't do these things. Fred is just lazy. He talks to me too much about football and the Civil War. Fred mostly sleeps in his chair, waiting on retirement. He plays classical music all day. I've become quite the Camille Saint-Saens fan because of Fred.

"Good, I want you to hear this too," Geraldine says, as Fred waddles to his desk. I look at Geraldine's crotch as Fred settles in. You can see her camel toe. I cannot stand this woman. But I wonder what it would be like to fuck her. She'd probably complain the whole time.

"What now?" Fred says, taking off his baseball hat. He has short black hair, and a small moustache. Fred looks like Oliver Hardy trapped in a world that has forgotten Oliver Hardy.

"He stinks!" Geraldine shouts. Fred motions for her to come into the office. It is private confab time. Geraldine smiles a little bit. She's getting exactly what she wants. "I don't know if he has problems going to the bathroom or what, but he smells. He smells like urine. And I cannot work another day like this. I can't sit at that desk next to him!"

Fred puts his head in his hands. He's been through this with Bill for a few years now. Fred has sat face to face with Bill to tell him about the complaints. Fred has given Bill the work policy on grooming. Bill has mountains of copies of this policy. He probably knows it by heart. I honestly don't know why Fred keeps talking to him, or why Bill works with these women knowing that they are conspiring behind him. I imagine that he needs the money. I imagine that Bill needs this repetition in his life. Fred is just doing what he needs to do until he can retire and travel to all of the Civil War battlefields and to the football hall of fame.

"We'll talk to him," Fred says.

"When?" Geraldine wants to know. She crosses her arms. Doing so makes her breasts pop up further in her shirt.

"That's not for you to know," Fred says.

"Fine. I guess I'll just spray some Lysol until you guys get around to it." Geraldine opens the office door and walks out. She slams the door shut.

Fred and I sit in silence for a moment or so.

"I guess we have to talk to him again," he says.

"Yep," I say.

I'm dreading this. I've never hauled anyone in to an office to reprimand him before. It was always me on that end. I've stood before countless supervisors with my head bowed, being told everything that I'd done wrong. I've sat face to face across from small men who reeked of coffee and cigarettes, who had depressing lives all the way around, and have been told that I looked like a bum. I've been sent home to shave. I've been yelled at for something as trivial as a belt. At a wine store two managers hauled me in to yell at me about a stain on my pants. They kept me in the office for twenty minutes, ridiculing me, telling me how much of a disgrace I was to the place. They never even let me speak. Had I, I would've told them the stain was only an hour old. It was from one of their fucking wine bottles shattering all over me, after some prick customer dropped it on the floor. And now I was joining their ranks.

"I'll walk you through it," Fred says.

"Me?"

"Well, you are Bill's direct supervisor."

"But you're here."

"I'm not here all of the time. What if I wasn't here?"

Then I would've let it go, I think. I would've taken Geraldine's complaint as one of the many it takes to get through a day with her. "I don't know."

"It would be you doing it," he says.

"Fine. What do I do?"

Fred sits back in his chair. He throws his radio on, and classical music comes cascading out of it. "Just sit him down and tell him there have been complaints.... staff complaints. What I'd do is I'd give Bill a copy of the grooming policy. Make sure he reads it in front of you. Then tell him next time this happens you'll have to send him home."

"Okay," I say. I am defeated. I am not ready for this. I think of poor Bill sitting at his desk playing a game of solitaire as Geraldine sprays Lysol all over the place.

"Oh," Fred adds. "Tell him you'll have to write him up next time."

"Write him up," I repeat. Now I'm the kind of guy who has to write people up. I suppose I'll be keeping permanent records on people as well. If only the boys in the warehouse could see me now. If only all of those old bosses with their red eyes and yellow teeth could gaze upon me now. "Fred can I just say one thing?"

"Sure," he says.

"You and I both know that Geraldine is full of shit," I begin. I swear in front of Fred. I don't know if this is kosher but I don't care. "She complains about Bill all of the time, but she enables him as well. She fetches him his damned lunch. She invites him over for dinner on the weekends. One time she told me that she took him around looking for apartments." I stop for a moment to stare at Fred. His eyes are glazing over. He's is dreaming the burning of Atlanta. He doesn't care. No one does. "I mean how can you do all of this stuff for a guy, know his situation, and try to get him in trouble. That's being two-faced."

Fred stares at me for a moment. "Definitely show Bill the policy again."

All is lost.

"When should I do it?" I ask.

"Uh, soon," Fred says. "I just got here and I think I'm going to have my bagel and coffee. And then I'll just go to the staff room and read while you talk."

I look at my own neglected coffee. It's probably cold. I look at my half-eaten bagel. I have no taste for it. "Fine." Then I print the policy.

An hour later I'm pacing the floor, wondering how I'll muster the strength to do this. People are inside the building doing what they do. Most of them kill time on computers, hanging around on social networking sites because they cannot maintain real friendships or jobs. I watch Bill walk around collecting files to send to other branches. He's doing alright working. People have told me that he's gotten better since I started working here. They think maybe it's having someone new around. It's probably having a boss around, I think. A new boss. We make people uneasy. The other day one of my other employees told me that he was afraid of letting me down. Why? For Christ's sake the guy is my age. I don't care if he lets me down. The world has already let me down. I only care that his ass is at the desk when mine isn't supposed to be.

Fred comes out of the office and gives me a nod, before waddling off to the staff room with his newspaper and half-drunk coffee. It's show time.

"Bill," I say nervously. He looks up. Every head looks up. I turn to Geraldine and she already has a pack of her wolves around her. They are snickering. I can see the triumph in their eyes.

"Yep," Bill says. Yep. That's how he talks. Everything is yep and nope. Maybe his wife left him because she got sick of hearing that.

"I need to talk to you, you know, whenever you're done getting your work together."

"I can talk now." Bill sets his files down and walks toward me. He walks with a defeated slouch. As soon as he gets over to me I can smell a little bit of the musty odor on him. It's not piss like Geraldine said it was. It's more like a faint body odor. Bill smells no worse than any sad sack going to work on a bus or a train. He smells like humanity. You really have to huff to be offended by it. "What do you need?"

"Let's go in the office," I say.

This gets an eyebrow raise. "Okay." Bill likes to say okay a lot as well. I could tell him to kill a group of kids, and the best I'd get from him is a "yep," a "nope," or an "okay."

We get into the office. I shut the door. Bill looks back at the sound of it. Having a boss shut a door on you means a lot of things. I know what was running through my head when they did it to me. Degradation. Fear of unemployment. Humiliation. I don't want to speculate as to what Bill is feeling, but it has to be one of those. Of course, considering his history, I'm sure he has a clue what this is about. He looks at me with his big, sad eyes. I motion for him to sit. He does. He sits in my seat. That's fine. I don't want the seat or the job. I can picture Geraldine laughing out there on the floor, happy because her damage has been done. I sit across from Bill. He's already holding the grooming policy in his hands.

"Bill," I begin. I look at the policy in his hands. He's studying it. When I don't say anything else, he looks up at me. I can't look him in the eye. The hand holding the paper is shaking. I'm not man enough for this. I can take all comers at the bar. I can get drunk and fight with the neighbors over noise. But I cannot tell this man that he smells.

"Yep," he says. Bill is helping me along.

"There have been some complaints about your body odor," I say. Bill nods. I think to blame it on the customers. Maybe that will give the issue some importance, I think. But I decide to keep it as it is, farcical and petty. "Really it's been staff complaints."

Bill nods.

"I mean I don't know what to tell you," I continue. "People have issues with all kinds of shit, man." There I go, trying to break it down to common language. Swear. Talk normally, like you would to a guy in the bar. I'm willing to bet every douche bag boss thinks that they are on the level when they speak this way. I cough. I have to push the words out. "Take me for instance. I walk to work. That's six miles. I'm sure I don't smell good every day. I can only imagine what they are saying about me."

"Yep," Bill says.

I'm quiet for a second. I want this to end. I thought maybe I'd end with a little about the grooming policy, but I haven't read the fucking thing. I don't dare mention writing Bill up. Geraldine, Fred, and everyone above them; they can go to hell if they think I'm writing this guy up for stinking. Maybe a pep talk. I hate pep talks. Pep talks are the reason that I quit playing sports, and why I hate sports related movies. Every pep talk every boss ever gave to me just made me hate them even more than I already did. Maybe I'll ask Bill if he needs anything, like someone to talk to, or someone to help. I think about offering myself, but whom am I kidding? If Bill called me I wouldn't pick up the phone. I don't even pick up the phone when my own mother calls.

"Anyway, I just want to bring this to your attention," I say.

"Okay," Bill says.

"Are we cool?" I say it just like I'd gotten into a fight with a pal of mine on a basketball court.

"Yep," Bill says, standing. He still has the grooming policy in his hands, even though I didn't offer it to him.

"Okay," I say. I think about all those bosses again. The retail prick who rode me about my facial hair and belt; the office drone who constantly talked about me not being innovative enough; the wine store clowns who were always on me about everything and anything in such a merciless way. I think of them and others who have punished me, debased me in so many different and interesting ways. I think about them as Bill heads to the door. He opens it. I am their brother. I'm in their club now. When Bill is gone I crash into my seat. It is still faint with the scent of him. I put my head in my hands and think that I could stay this way for the rest of my working life.

"Hey," a voice says.

I look up. It's Bill. He's still holding the grooming policy. I brace myself for whatever wrath he is about to unleash. I tell myself that I won't hold it against him.

"Can I go across the street and get a cup of coffee?" he asks.

"Sure," I say.

Then Bill is gone again. The office is silent, full of nothing but my own hollow misery. Soon Fred will be back. He'll want to know how it went, but more importantly he'll want to talk about nonsense, work nonsense and gossip. I don't have the stomach for it. All I want to do is leave this torturous palace of gloom, find a bar, and suck away on glass after glass of scotch. I think about going to the liquor store down the street and buying a pint. But I've been down that road before. Instead I just sit there. But not for long.

"We need to do something about him," Geraldine says.

I look up. She's in the doorway again. She's always in the doorway. "Bill?" I ask.

"No. Scott." She steps in the office. "Scott's in the bathroom again. He's always in the bathroom and it isn't fair. There's like five of us waiting to go. What's with you men here? You need to all go and get your prostates checked or something. I talked to Fred but he told me to come and talk to you. I think if Scott is going to use the bathroom all of the time then he should have to use the public toilet."

I stare at Geraldine. I can't believe that she is human. First Bill and now Scott. Scott is quiet and leaves everyone alone. He's the one who was worried about disappointing me. If only Scott knew what disappointment was. Maybe he does. Maybe his life is one great disappointment as well. I don't know. But I do know that Scott has irritable bowl syndrome. It is probably made worse by working eight hours a day with these judgmental women.

"What would you like me to do?" I ask

Geraldine shrugs. "I don't know. You're the supervisor. Just do something. Or else me and a few of the others are calling the hotline."

"Sure," I say.

Then Geraldine walks out of the doorway and it is silent again. But it is not a good silence. It is ominous. It could go on forever.

BIO: John Grochalski's poems have appeared in Avenue, The Lilliput Review, The New Yinzer, The Blue Collar Review, The Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, The ARTvoice, Modern Drunkard Magazine, The American Dissident, Words-Myth, My Favorite Bullet, The Main Street Rag, Thieves Jargon, Underground Voices, Why Vandalism, Eclectica, Zygote In My Coffee, Gloom Cupboard, the Kennesaw Review, Re)Verb, Octopus Beak Inc., Clockwise Cat, The Smoking Poet, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, and Cherry Bleeds. His fiction has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pequin, and will be forthcoming in the anthology Living Room Handjob. Grochalski's column The Lost Yinzer appears quarterly in The New Yinzer (www.newyinzer.com), and his book of poems The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out is coming out via Six Gallery Press in 2008. Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is a librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.