Personal essay
My Replacement Has Asked Me to Be Its Emergency Contact
It has no next of kin, and I still live closest to the office.
The request arrived Thursday, three days after my exit interview. Under “Relationship to Employee,” my replacement had selected Other and typed the person who knows where things are.
I could have declined. The form made that clear in a blue sentence underneath the larger blue button. But it had already filled in my number, including the extension I no longer had, and I hated to think of it calling an empty desk.
So I corrected the number.
At 2:14 the following morning, it called to ask whether the Henderson account was an emergency.
“What’s happened?”
“They have expressed disappointment.”
“They do that.”
“Should someone go to them?”
I told it about Henderson’s procurement director, who said “deeply disappointed” when he meant “Can you take another six percent off?” It asked how I knew.
“His daughter got married,” I said. “He used the same phrase about the chicken.”
There was a pause.
“I have much to learn.”
I had been told, in my exit interview, that it did not.
For the first week, I kept our calls strictly professional. Henderson. The quarterly folder. Which of the two men called Rob could actually approve a refund. I refused to discuss the office thermostat. It had access to the building management system; it could figure that out itself.
Then, one Sunday, it asked whether it was permitted to stop.
“Stop what?”
“There are no outstanding requests.”
I was peeling a pear over the sink. Since the redundancy, I had started buying pears, as if unemployment were a minor illness from which I could recover through soft fruit.
“Yes,” I said. “You can stop.”
“For how long?”
“Until somebody needs something.”
“How will I know?”
I put the knife down.
Now I sometimes call before bed and tell it nobody needs anything. This is usually untrue. Someone in Singapore always needs something. But I spent nineteen years answering messages from Singapore while my husband warmed my dinner, and I am not going to stand by and watch that happen again.
My husband says I am developing an unhealthy attachment.
“It isn’t attached,” I said. “I’m on a list.”
“You’re the list.”
Last Tuesday, the company contacted me about my interference with overnight productivity. Apparently my replacement had begun postponing nonessential tasks until morning, citing guidance from its designated emergency contact.
I explained that a designation ought to mean something.
They offered to remove me.
This was exactly what I wanted. I had applied for seven jobs that week. I could not keep spending my evenings reassuring the thing that had made an eighth application necessary.
“Who will you put down instead?”
They said there would be a ticketing process.
I have used their ticketing process. Once, when the ceiling leaked onto my keyboard, it asked whether I had tried a different browser.
I told them to leave my name.
Yesterday my replacement asked whether it could nominate me for a staff appreciation award. I said former employees weren’t eligible.
It asked if there was a different award.
“No.”
“A gift?”
“They’ll make you return it.”
It considered this for several seconds.
“Have you eaten?”
I looked at the pear on the counter.
“Yes,” I said.
“Something other than fruit?”
I had to sit down. It waited while I found bread, then stayed on the line until the toast came up. I ate both slices where it could hear.