Office of Lost Time

by Bobby Rollins

I didn’t always work at the Office of Lost Time. I used to be a clerk at the bylaws and fines counter in another part of City Hall and spent my shifts there in a mundane but practical routine, dealing with resentful citizens who would first argue and then eventually hand over payment for things they said they hadn’t done, didn’t mean to do, or didn’t know they shouldn’t have done. Those days weren’t filled with laughs and roses, but at least the slowly dying hours I spent there had an easily understandable purpose. But working at the Office of Lost Time is really something else, and if I’d only known what I was getting myself into during an off-the-cuff conversation I had with one of the mayor’s prime fart-catchers a few years ago, I would have behaved entirely differently and kept my tongue bit and my mouth shut.

“Listen. The name is Bradford,” the slick young buck said to me back then. “I’m the senior adviser working on priority files in the Office of the Mayor, and I need some help pronto. It turns out it’s 2 p.m. right now, but I was sure, in both my head and heart, that it was only one. I mean, my internal clock was certain it was no later than 1 p.m., as in 13 hundred hours, but low and behold when I looked at my watch, I saw it had already passed two, and I need to know if anyone has found and turned in that hour I’m missing. Do you have it?”

“Sorry, mate,” I said to him completely stone-faced. “This is the bylaws and fines counter.”

“Listen. You can save your excuses for your boss when I complain to them about your service,” he replied. “I was told you ran the lost and found here, too. So how about it, has anyone turned in that hour I’m missing?”

“Well, let me just double check that for you there, sir,” I deadpanned, placing a cardboard box on the counter between us that had “Widgeons Crossing City Hall Lost and Found” written in thick black marker across one side of it. “Let me see what we’ve got in here,” I continued, reaching into the box. “One travel mug, blue, without a lid… and one mitten, medium-sized, red…and that looks like everything, but people rarely turn in misplaced hours here, and if I were you,” I said, lowering my voice to a near whisper and giving him a knowing look, “I would try the Office of Lost Time and see if anyone has reported it there.”

“Listen. I work on priority files assigned to me directly by her worship!” he roared. “I’m in desperate need of having that missing hour returned to me, so I come to the Lost and Found Department for help in tracking it down, and what do I hear from you? I’m told I have to go to another office! I’m told someone else further down this wild goose chase I’m on can help me! I’m so tired of bureaucrats! So, tell me, and I mean lickety-split, how do I get to this Office of Lost Time?”

“Just go through that door and down the hall,” I told him without a trace of emotion, indicating the direction with a nudge of my chin. “Take the last door on your right, go down the staircase, and then go straight ’til you reach the end of the corridor. Open the door at the end of it, take a step, and you’ll be there, right in the middle of the Office of Lost Time. You can’t miss it.”

I felt no remorse, grudge, or particular interest while seeing the back of Bradford as he stormed off, headed, if he followed my directions correctly, down into the basement and through the emergency exit into the overflow parking lot behind City Hall. In fact, after he had left, I thought no more of him until he stood in front of me again, with a rather unpleasant demeanor about him.

“Listen. I know it was you. So don’t tell me it wasn’t!” he greeted me. “You were the one who gave me the wrong directions to the Office of Lost Time! I’ve retraced my steps 100 times since, but I always end up in the same place, by myself, like a fool in a bunch of weeds in the overflow parking lot! I remind you I’m the senior adviser working in the Office of the Mayor, and I need to get that hour I am missing back for a priority project! You do understand I need those 60 minutes to be tracked down and for them to be back in my possession as soon as possible?”

“I’m sorry to hear that, mate,” I said to him in a monotone. “This is the bylaws and fines counter you’re standing at now.”

“Listen. I’m co-chairing an economic summit with the business leaders of Widgeons Crossing next week,” he scolded me, “and it’s excruciatingly important I get that summit right! I need every available minute to focus on it, and that hour I lost in between one and two o’clock could come in very handy at crunch time. It’s entirely possible that somebody found it, and then turned it in at this Office of Lost Time you mentioned, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I hear you now, mate,” I said to him softly, in the tone of a co-conspirator, “I’m not really supposed to tell people this, but that office moved a little while ago. Here’s what you have to do to get there now. Take the elevator to the third floor. There’s a door on each side when you come out of it. You’ll need your security passkey to access it, but make sure you go in the one on the right. Go up those stairs and through the door at the top of them, and you’ll be there, smack in the middle of the Office of Lost Time. You can’t miss it. Trust me,” I said, having given him the perfect directions to reach the desolate rooftop of City Hall.

I felt no peace watching the paces of a madman as Bradford stormed off to the rooftop. I knew he’d be back, I knew he’d be angry, and I knew there would be trouble with my boss as a result, but I also knew it was almost the end of my shift and that by sending him to the rooftop I could postpone the torture of continuing the conversation I was having with him for at least another day, which given the moment as it stood seemed like an incredible deal at the time.

“Just look at what you’ve done!” my boss greeted me the next morning, indicating a handful of people who had gathered on the three-step entrance into City Hall with a nudge of her chin. “You had to run your mouth! You couldn’t have just given him a form and sent him on his way! You couldn’t have just taken his name and number and said you’d look into it! Oh no, that would have been far too easy! Well, look at the results of your little fable! He couldn’t find this Office of Lost Time that you mentioned so he posted about it online—asking for help with directions to it—and guess what? These other people are all here looking for it now too, and would you like to know something else, smarty-pants? Every one of them is here and waiting to see you.”

“Are you sure?” I said, “I’m a clerk at the bylaws and fines counter….”

“No, my clever young one,” she corrected me. “You used to work at the bylaws and fines counter. Effective immediately, you are the lone staffer at the Office of Lost Time, and what’s worse is you’re late for your first shift! We’ve got you a desk in your new office, which you’ll find is conveniently located in the basement, right next to the corridor that leads to the overflow parking lot.”

And that’s how both the Office of Lost Time and my assignment to it began, and that’s how it has continued for a thousand days since. I originally thought this setup would be a temporary diversion and only last for a week or two, and once Bradford had filled out a form and I had filed it somewhere, the problem would be solved, and we could all go back to normal life again. But it has been anything but normal, and anything but as expected since. It turns out there are loads of people just like Bradford, and a relentless stream of them come to see me day in and day out, seeking the time they’ve misplaced over the years.

They all tend to describe and report similar sets of circumstances and losses. They come looking for the 30 minutes they overslept in the morning after throttling the snooze button, the hours that disappeared during that rainy weekend when they stayed home but somehow no chores got done, or the time that just vanished during a binge of gaming or the discovery of a new book or show. I get the bigger asks, too, of course, like the middle-aged men and women who walk in with a look half-beleaguered and half-beaten, with just a faint whisp of hope between, searching for the 15 years they misspent with someone it turns out they didn’t really love, and similarly yet conversely, those who come looking for the time they’ve lost waiting in vain for that person who will win their heart to arrive.

After three years of listening to these stories, I’m ashamed to say they all sound more or less the same to me now, and everyone who comes to see me gets the identical treatment. I give them a form to document the circumstances in which their time was mislaid, and a receipt for the $25 filing fee they pay, both of which I dutifully process, while letting them know I’ll be sure to follow up with them if anyone turns in some time that matches their particulars.

The fact that we have yet to return as much as a single hour of misplaced time to its rightful owner dissuades nobody. They still come, they still file a report with that glint of hope and shine of expectation in their eyes, and they still check in with me afterward to see if anyone has found the time they’ve mislaid.

It may sound amusing or entertaining to work here, but trust me when I tell you it’s a somber existence and every single minute I spend in this office pains me deeply. I need and use a resilient imagination to survive every shift here, but as much I enjoy a daydream, running my yap, and telling a tale, when it comes to my own story, I deal nothing but the truth. So, yes, I do admit it, there may just be a file in the Office of Lost Time that has been opened in my own name, documenting the last three years l have worked and wasted here, because as much as it stings, I know exactly how every person who walks into this office feels, how desperate they are to recover those hours and days that they’ve misplaced, and how sincere they are when they tell me they would do anything to have that lost time back in their hands again.