Frog Banquet
“I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can stomach this one.”
K nodded and we continued eating.
The interim Director had been ineffective. “I don’t know what to do about all this,” he said, meekly dumping a fresh bucket handed down from the Board, “Really, I’m at a loss.” The veins in his arms and legs were sealing shut, his spine bent and memory already long since suspect. Less than one year into assuming the role, it had destroyed him. The Board stopped inviting him to meetings. Sensing the end, he stopped showing up at all. The door stood open to his small, cluttered office. They never even told him he was fired.
Not long thereafter, a gray man appeared at the door. He shook everyone’s hand with incredible ferocity, saying how important and appreciated our work was. He represented the Board and had a letter, which he read aloud: the Director would be replaced, either by himself— a successful businessman, who (the letter noted, or he ad-libbed with pride) had recently defeated simultaneous lawsuits regarding toxins in the reservoir and multiple counts of sexual misconduct —or by a member of the Police Department. We had an hour to decide.
We entered a period of discussion. As a representative of the Board, Mr. Pritchards sat with us to facilitate the conversation. I will not speak for others, but out of garden variety concern that anything said then might be subject to reprisal later, I limited my own involvement to the most trivial of responses (in this case, a perfunctory answer to Mr. Pritchards’ general demand to “Introduce yourself!”), and in this I sensed I was not alone.
The standpoints, generally, were these—Pritchards had the experience. His recent successes seemed proof of something. Some folks even considered his history of poisoning to be a strength. Having confirmed this, he gregariously shifted the focus from himself, and instead onto rumors that the other candidate was a woman. H, a gray-haired veteran with a reputation of particular talent (though I’d only ever seen him in a supervisory role), volunteered his opinion that women shouldn’t serve on the police force at all (and on that basis, no such candidate could be trusted). Mr. Pritchards responded with gravity that while no man was to blame in particular, it was men in general who have authored the means of our slow-burning end (whatever warmth or light its explosive force sheds on demand in our quarters of space and time). Several folks murmured in agreement. Then it was stated that we’d seen previous female Directors and it hadn’t made much of a difference in the end, which in turn became the focus of debate. There were two factions in our staff, because there had been an argument one day and almost everyone took sides, even though it had nothing to do with them. These people did most of the talking, while the rest of us just sat in silence.
As the hour mark worried into sight, K wondered aloud about the relevance of this topic, perhaps even of the contest itself, but at that point, Mr. Pritchards interrupted her, saying she was absolutely right. Then he asked the room, “Who believes in Progress?”
Most of us raised our hands. Then he said, “It’s decided.” Then he asked us all to bow our heads, then he went around crushing all of our hands again, remarking in passing at the alarming number of frogs everywhere—not as a criticism, so much as he genuinely seemed not to comprehend the meaning of their existence, because he said, “How do you get anything done with these frogs all over the place?”
Some of us were standing around afterward, cautiously optimistic that if nothing else, a new leader couldn’t be worse than the rudderless state we’d fallen into. “I don’t know,” K was saying, “I guess I’m not so sure about that.” H happened to be passing by and leaned in, saying, “Listen, I know what you mean. Women are different.” Then he said, “Us guys gotta stick together,” and jabbed me in the ribs. Then he looked at K and said, “No offense,” and walked out of the building.
The new Director did not appear for several weeks. In the meantime, the frogs kept arriving faster than we could swallow them. The situation had deteriorated seemingly beyond the point of recovery when she burst in with a panel of experts, who cast about the place with disgusted, pitying looks. The first thing they had us do was gather all the frogs and lock them away in the closet. Then we had to break all the furniture in the building, haul it out to a big pile on carts into the rain, and assemble a set of hard plastic stools that had arrived by mail in long cardboard boxes while we were clearing the place out.
The morning’s shipment was also outside, but we were told to disregard it and focus on the stools.
“This will make us much stronger as a team,” they said. Once the stools were assembled, we sat in a circle.
“There,” said the Director, “I know things have been hard, but this will be a new and successful year. We’re going to have fun.”
Everyone in the room nodded and clapped. We went around and identified ourselves and received new names and positions. Mine was fairly nebulous—nominally, I was in charge of counting and registering all frogs, but really I was just eating them with everyone else, because there were too many to manage and no one would have believed the numbers anyway, most likely. So I came up with a method where I estimated the total at the end of each month and synthesized a believable count and this is what we reported to the Board and to the State when I filed our quarterly reports, which used to be completed by the Interim Director (or anyway, by a senior member of staff with his name on it). I was also in charge of the Employee Handbook, which I furnished for review and revision, because I was the only one who knew where a copy was.
“Thanks,” said the Director, folding the ragged paper in half and shoving it into the pocket of her tactical vest, “Our lawyers will go over this and make sure everything is above board.” Then one of the experts said, “Thank God we got here when we did. I don’t know how you made it this far with all of those frogs everywhere, without even a handbook or any guidelines or rules.”
I looked questioningly for the Director, but she had already left the room and the experts were queueing up the first of what proved to be an intense month of video lectures on the origins of frogs in society and the new system we’d be using to document all stages of the process to optimize our results.
After, they asked if there were any questions.
“What are we going to do about those frogs?” someone said.
“Frogs?” they said, “We’ll have to check into that. Alright everyone, stand and push your stools in.”
We pushed the stools into a neat circle in the middle of the otherwise empty room, then the panel of experts went into the Director’s office and closed the door and we didn’t see them again for a few days.
Meanwhile, the shipments had only increased in frequency, arriving in cardboard boxes now like everything else, hauled by beleaguered strangers who materialized out of the rain and vanished just as quickly. The one thing they never did was leave them in the same place twice—we found those boxes at the door, but also in the high, thin recesses of the windows which didn’t open, or in front of a blank wall halfway around the far end of the building. Often, they just left them at the mouth of the parking lot, and we dragged them through the puddles, storing them in the closet for want of a better option, working later hours, leaving and arriving exhausted, but further behind.
We were faced with a grim choice: work through the old buckets, while the new grew emaciated and sinewy, or focus on the fresh ones while the old decayed, ever more putrid and mucilaginous. Drying them was out of the question—the rain rendered even the inside of the building swampy and humid, subject to flood even as the air grew colder. L had the idea of sealing them in jars so they would ferment, to take advantage of natural processes, likewise pickling the recent arrivals we couldn’t get down. However, before we could get too far along on that, she was hit by a car on the way to her second job, which we only heard about because someone called her after she missed three days, at which time we were instructed not to discuss the matter or communicate with her until she returned.
Once in a while, the experts would dump a bucket of decrepit ones who had hopped back to their offices months earlier. They asked us why are there jars in the closet and why are there “so many frogs everywhere.” When we tried to explain what had happened, they said, “You’re too focused on frogs,” or else, “No one is eating these frogs,” or even, “We all eat the frogs as a team,” but mostly they furnished a growing array of worksheets, requiring ever more repetitive and minute documentation. I tried to explain that we already had this sort of thing written down from before, but they told me to focus on alphabetizing the sheets into folders at a desk near the front door, in case anyone came in. There was a permanent dark pool of water there about six inches deep.
“Crazy place, isn’t it!” I looked up and H was standing there, gnawing on a leg. “The one thing about this job is you don’t have to buy lunch!”
“Yeah.”
There was a loud pounding at the door, and I looked up to see Mr. Pritchards peering in, shielding his head with a plastic folder. He kept tapping on the glass as I went to open the door, then grabbed my hand and asked my name, disappearing back to the Director’s offices before I could think of an excuse not to respond.
Everyone gathered back in the room with the stools, murmuring softly as the experts processed in, equally in the dark it seems, because they were murmuring, too. The Director followed with Mr. Pritchards and another man who resembled a bog mummy. He crossed the room at a snail's pace, accompanied by a younger woman whose face was coated in a thick orange mask of makeup like someone from TV, the corpselike pallor of her flesh apparent only by her wrists as she lifted a glove hand, waving to the Director, who addressed her as “Ms. Garrison,” then whispered to one of the experts (who by then was known as the Assistant Director), who in turn approached us and said, “Get Mr. Salmon a chair.”
J pointed out that there were no chairs, since we had broken them all to pieces. The Assistant Director turned pale and, with a horrified look of utter helplessness, rushed back to the Director, who came over herself and said, “There are chairs in my office.” By the time Mr. Salmon had made it to the circle of stools, someone had returned with the chair and he was seated with half-closed eyes.
After about twenty minutes, a young man arrived and shook hands with Mr. Pritchards. “Sorry I’m late,” he said with a beaming smile, addressing the room abstractly. His black suit and black hair shined in the pale overhead light. “Thank you for everything you do,” he added, “Your work is very important.”
Mr. Pritchards laughed. His eyes flashed with noble pride as he spoke in a ringing voice, “Now we are all here!” He circled the room, shaking hands with all of us, then, once he was seated, had us all stand and introduce ourselves and sit down again.
The Director stood in the middle of the room, facing our guests. “We’re doing great things,” she said. Then, turning to us, she said, “We’re doing great work. We just need to start paying more attention to what each of us can do to make sure things are moving forward.”
She nodded to the Assistant Director, who had queued up a low resolution video, ostensibly about workplace safety. The host wandered through a grainy, acontextual labyrinth of colored boxes. Every so often, a sketch was performed by actors perpetrating some dire negligent act that involved getting crushed to death or lighting the place on fire, none of which had to do with frogs, their storage, or eating them. At the end, one of the actors pulled a gun, at which point the host commented, “The workplace can be dangerous. Keeping an eye on your coworkers is keeping an eye out for your coworkers.”
When this was finished, they asked if anyone had any questions.
Mr. Salmon laboriously stood up and said, “Thank you for having me here, even though I’m just a lonely old man.” Everyone laughed and told him he shouldn’t say that, then Ms. Garrison helped him sit down again and said something about her dog. Everyone laughed again.
H raised his hand and said, “I have a cat,” then he said, “People of a certain age know that hard work is good. Some day, I hope my kids will understand that, too!” (those of us who laughed at this received harsh looks from the Assistant Director). Mr. Pritchards nodded sagely, launching into a long anecdote about the service he’d received at a restaurant, then after a brief pause, seeming to recall the rest of us were there, he said, “Anyone else?”
K raised her hand, but he continued scanning the room with a blank smile, neck craned as if searching for someone behind her, behind all of us, until the Director pointed at K, then he pointed at her too and said, “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.” K started talking, but he talked over her, waiving his arms and shouting, “Introduce yourself again!” He sounded frustrated, but there was a big grin on his face.
K stated her name and position, then asked if they were hiring anyone else soon. The Director looked at the young man in the suit and said, “Do you want to take that one, Andre?”
Andre nodded, stood up and cleared his throat, then sneezed very loudly, five or six times and said, “Excuse me, ugh, excuse me,” and sat down again.
Next, J raised his hand. Before he could say anything, Mr. Pritchards wagged his finger and said, “Ah, ah—don’t forget to introduce ourself.”
“I’m sorry,” said J, and introduced himself and said, “Ok, so my question is basically— actually, how are we supposed to eat all these frogs?”
“Frogs,” repeated the Director, with a bemused smile. She shook her head slowly. The Assistant Director said, “Mr. J, we’ll meet about that. Maybe you can bring in some buckets from home. I know you know all the nicest buckets.” Everyone laughed again, then the Director and the Assistant Director took turns restating how good and important our work was. Gradually, a hum of conversation rose within the various groups, then Mr. Pritchards stood and asked us to bow our heads and shook everyone’s hand, then the guests left and the chair was brought back to the Director’s office. It was an hour after the usual dismissal time, so we went home.
The following day, J wasn’t at work. None of us ever saw or heard from him again. The Assistant Director posted a note on the double doors to the hallway leading to the bathrooms and the offices, which by now were always locked. It read: “Please Insure ALL JARS Are EMPTIED by Close Of Business TODAY……. If you have any Questions, Please ask!! Kindly,” (and it was signed by the Assistant Director).
So that was where we found ourselves, choking down mouthfuls of fetid muck, wondering how much longer it could last, how things could still yet get any worse. I kept saying, “That’s it. I’ve had enough. I’m out of here.” K said, “Don’t quit. Just get through today. We’re in this together.” Finally, one of our coworkers turned gray and collapsed.
Wordlessly, I got up and went to the Director’s office. Since the door to the hallway was locked, I had to exit the building and walk to a side door, which was also locked. For a long time, I stood in the rain, ringing the bell as the water dripped down my neck, furious at being ignored. Gradually, it dawned on me that no one was there at all. Just as I turned to leave, soaked to the bone for nothing, having set my coworkers further back by my absence, a buzzer sounded and I heard the door click.
With a gentle push, I found myself in the dim back area where the offices are. All of the doors were closed, as usual, except the Director’s, which was ajar. A hand reached out, beckoning me in. I’d been in that room before, but now it seemed cavernous, as if expanded in a protracted ingoing breath—an effect amplified by the fact that it contained only a desk and two chairs. The distance from the door suggested she must have either sprinted from the desk and back or somehow reached her arm across the entire room to wave me in. The atmosphere was cool and dry, though I could identify no source of ventilation and the single window was fastened shut with red velvet curtains drawn across it.
Without delay, I began to explain what had happened, but she held up her hand and gestured to sit down. The desk was carved with intricate embellishments and a matching chair upholstered in red leather. As I squished across the room and sat, shivering, I found too that it was shockingly uncomfortable.
“Now,” she said, handing me a small white handkerchief, “Please.”
Haltingly, I resumed my statement, but a dull hum permeated the room, which seemed to expand, pulling the air from my lungs as I gasped, carried into a disarrayed exegesis of the past two years, tangled in my own words and the flood of emotion for my coworkers and the failing inscrutable project of labor. I was crying by then and she handed me another handkerchief, which was printed with the logo of the police department and the word “INTEGRITY” with a blue line drawn across it.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “Everything is going to be fine. I have to get to a meeting now.” I stood to leave, with the feeling something had been decided, but unclear as to what it was or what type of result, if any, it might have.
“Oh, by the way.” She reached into a drawer and slid a paper across her desk. I looked down to see it was the handbook, unchanged, except that a sticky note had been placed on the cover with the current year scribbled on it. “Make sure everyone reads this.”
Philip Mittereder
Philip Mittereder lives in Philadelphia. He published a magazine with friends called Mad House from 2013-2017. He might do that again one day, who knows—I guess I could tell you some other things, but honestly you’re better off taking a walk and guess and maybe we’ll talk about it one day and check how many answers really are in there.