Order! Order!

Dearest Mildred,

My sweet sister, forgive me for the tone of this letter. It has been so long since I have written, and I know you would hope for a warm hello followed by a recounting of things in my life and an inquiry into yours. But it simply cannot be. The situation in which I find myself is too dire. I fear that I have done something terrible, something the effects of which shall be a punishment not only to me, but all of us in this fair city.

As I am sure father has told you, I attained a position last fall in the Department of Routine. What father did not inform you, given that I did not inform father, is that I have been profoundly unhappy there. It is not due to the rote and uninspired tasks assigned me. If anything, this is why I applied for this position: my love of the rote and uninspiring.

My issue is with my immediate superiors. While they profess a loyalty to Routine, it is clear to me that their loyalty is surface-level. I have observed two of them, for example, taking their lunch at 11:58, rather than exactly at noon. And one of them drinks two cups of coffee each day, but on occasions when he is tired, will sneak off to fetch a third. In other words, while they enforce Routine, they do not adhere to Routine themselves, and moreover, they show no respect for Routine. At least, they do not show the same level of respect as me.

And so, I hatched a plan. I would buy them vibrantly patterned Unsimply Stitched Socks in gift boxes, and I would leave these gift boxes in their respective offices, a present from a anonymous giver.

Here is my reasoning for such “generosity”: current Routine allows toenail trimming on a biweekly basis, which, depending on one’s growth rate, is often enough time for one’s nails to grow to a level of sharpness that challenges the integrity of certain poorly made garments. And since Routine allows sock-shopping only once every seven months, many find themselves stuck suffering for months with their toes poking through holes. Therefore, it was my theory that my superiors would incorporate these new, wildly-patterned socks into their wardrobe, at which point their superiors would see them and deem them hardly befitting of someone ostensibly in charge of our city’s regularity. They–the sock recipients–would be fired, I would be promoted, and then all would see that my devotion far outpaced that of my predecessors.

And I was right on the first count; they took the socks. But on the second count, my plan faltered. My superiors were not fired. In fact, the new additions to their wardrobe had many admirers and now others in far senior positions have purchased their own. This is in defiance of the Routine–it has been just two months since our last sock-shopping day–but they seem not to care. Rather, now that they’ve started wearing the Unsimply Stitched socks, there is quite a lot of discussion in our halls as to whether we need Routine at all.

And so, sister, I will be going dark for some time, to try and pull strings–some metaphorical, others literal and holding colorful socks together–in order to keep the Department of Routine from wholly imploding. And if I am powerless to stop it, please burn this letter. For I cannot stand the idea of my name printed in the history books as the man who destroyed our collective sense of order.

Sincerely,
Fartolomew Hutchins