Giant Logic Gain LTD.

For the most part, we did point of sales stuff. And we were exactly like you people: hungry at inappropriate times, exhausted, staggering through the consumer landscape, tagged and being electronically tracked like wounded animals, only we were more cognizant of this fact. We had the data.

I worked for Giant Logic Gain LTD. And what we did was collect and collate information and prepare reports. We operated out of a dumpy little skyscraper in the CBD just off Pitt Street. We used all this precious data to make you, dear consumer, buy breath mints and gut-rotting energy drinks and extra batteries at the petrol station cash register. At the supermarket checkout. You had done so well up until this point. You had dragged your screaming, brand-loyal kids through the maze of bad food choices and eye-popping marketing lures. You were in the home stretch. The checkout was your last hurdle but your defences were down and we were waiting for you. In ambush. Waiting to make you buy some last minute crap. We employed whatever marketing strategies were required. We hooked you in. We found your weaknesses.

And don't get me wrong, I used to absolutely love my job. I did. I couldn't wait to figure out new ways to make you buy shite. It was all very arrogant. I thought of myself as having a deep insight into human psychology. We were the temple priests, casting spells over the populous. But more recently? I wasn't so sure. I had lost my faith. More recently, I had slumped into a sort of mild existential quagmire. Was it the early onset of middle age? The layer of fat accumulating around my midsection? The unnerving fact that new blood was surging through the front door on a daily basis. New fucking wonder boys and wonder girls. Influencers of the influencers no less.

This quagmire didn't result in anything too dramatic. We're not talking radical, life-changing action here. Not like one of those 90's movies where the main character has a meltdown and tells everyone where to stick it, marching definitely out of the office with a box under his arm. No. There were bills to be paid. And I liked my Sydney lifestyle. Having said this, there were a few minor acts of rebellion on my part. For example...one morning, after a particularly gut-pummeling double latte, I was indisposed in the men's toilets and I wrote something on the partition wall, right under the toilet paper dispenser. Using my black Sharpie, I wrote….‘What are we doing? I mean really, what the hell are we doing?’ A simple request for clarity in the face of a cold, unknowable universe. Sure. Why not.
As time when by others in my building began to add their own comments. And being the men's toilet, this improvised public message board quickly degenerated into profanity and crude cartoons of dicks and naked women. In effect, it became a mind map of discontent, a dangling man-o-war of malignant graffiti. It stands to reason: we were all creative people competing to be heard. We had egos to wield. It was funny, crude, immature, profound, offensive...all of the above. You put boys in groups together their individual IQ's seem to plummet. This was never going to be the ladies where the discourse might have included long, carefully crafted debates covering a range of topics. No. This was cave painting with dung.

The CEO became extremely angry when he caught wind of this. Basically, he deemed it anti everything he stood for. The man was determined to stamp out this explosion of character deformation and bitching. He had the vandalised section of stall removed, set up in the main meeting room and, like the bad dogs we were, he rubbed our wet noses in this shameful act during a long, male-only staff meeting. We all sat there, scolded, eyes down on the carpet, as the CEO shouted and rattled on about the importance of maintaining morale in the workplace. Things are going to change around here, he screamed, mark my words gentlemen. If you are all so fucking unhappy....there is the door.

No one moved. The CEO continued to pace from one side of the room to the other, past the section of the toilet stall, eyes sweeping over us, looking for malcontents. He was fucking furious: vein-popping, brain aneurism furious. The senior members of staff sat on the sidelines, their arms folded, looking stern and disappointed, aping the CEO as best they could. We all waited. No one but the CEO spoke. Tonally, his lecture went up and down like an unpredictable roller coaster ride. He'd start off, addressing us in his composed, stern voice but then, suddenly, he would hit upon a flash point of extreme irritation and he would explode, his frustration booming out along with his spittle. This went on for quite awhile. It was like watching a man repeatedly come apart at the seams.
A few days later Alice Gilstrap appeared. Alice was beautiful in numerous ways. Alice was a hired gun, an efficiency expert. She was neat and precise. She glided. Nothing was wasted with Alice. Her beauty was clipped efficiency itself.

Alice remained superglued to my ass for about two whole weeks. During that time she followed me around the office, assessing everything I did down to the smallest detail. She was so good, I completely forgot she was there after the first few days. I'd go a whole morning, meetings and emails, not thinking about her. Then I'd turn around and nearly jump out of my skin because fucking Alice Gilstrap was lurking behind me. She recorded all her observations on her iPad. She wore a mask of neutrality. And then, when Friday afternoon rolled around, after drinks with the lads, she followed me off into my private life, assessing my performance at the gym, analysing a clumsy date I went on with a girl named Sophie. The three of us went off to a pricy vegetarian restaurant in Newtown. The sort of place where they serve you up a twenty dollar lump of tofu in a molten hot ceramic dish while wearing a straight face. Alice sat at the next table over appraising my romantic strategies. It was quite nerve-wracking.

Later on that same night, despite my best efforts and a fair amount of wine, Sophie refused to have sex with me, saying, no way buster, not with the efficiency expert sitting over there in the corner. You must be joking. Sophia rebuttoned her blouse and left, the echo of her heels receding along my street. Alice just looked at me, the iPad screen underlighting her mask of neutrality like some sort of spook that come to haunt my living room. Look, I said to her, don’t you think this might be a little artificial? I mean, I could be putting on a show for you at work and tonight....with Sophie....I certainly felt intimidated in the old love arena. I can assure you, tonight I was not at my best.
The act of being monitored, as an external influence, will be factored into your report, replied Alice, tapping her lovely fingernails against the screen of her iPad.

In the end, my role at Giant Logic Gain was consolidated with another member of staff. I was lucky enough to keep my job. The other poor fucker was canned which meant suddenly I was extremely busy. My days became an exhausting blur of activity. Gone were the long lunches spent swanning around the food court downstairs or streaming the latest Arcade Fire album while I stared dreamily out the window on the eleventh floor. Now I was under the hammer. Alice had set up evil little KPI's and other dangling characters. Not only this, my private life had also become streamlined and meta-organised. I was sent on dates with women who were more closely identified as my ‘type’. I was required to supply each woman with a survey after these dates with the intention of further honing my chances compatibility. My shopping list included more fruit and vegetables. Some of the more adolescent influences in my CD collection and iTunes account were removed. Well-being apps appeared magically on my phone. The copious quantities of alcohol consumption, when the working day was done and boys just wanted to have fun, ceased, eliminating hangovers and backstabbing. Like me, my co-workers were too busy with their major life overhauls. A personal trainer was assigned to me, a mean looking ex-military type guy with a crewcut. “Alice says ‘hi asshole'”, said my new unsmiling trainer the first morning I met him in the park. I knew he was going to make my life a living hell over the weeks to come. He had all his torture devices set up on the grass. Ropes, weights and hoops to jump through. Some sort of hellish duff-duff music to motive me and the other poor bastards who turned up.

Anyway, I adjusted to these changes. And in doing so, I have developed a new approximation of happiness. Every morning, after my affirmations in the mirror, I go to work feeling fresh and positive. Every night I make love to a girl who, although I don't really like as a person, I am assured I will eventually fall in love will. I hold her in my weary, bulked up arms and coo in her ear but secretly I dream of Alice Gilstrap. I wonder if Alice's private life is as efficient as her professional one. I think those two weeks under her beady-eyed scrutiny was the happiest time of my adult life. I felt contained and controlled. Is this what love is?

When I make love to my girlfriend, sometimes I fantasise about Alice. In my dirtiest fantasies, I imagine Alice Gilstrap having this secret inner life. I imagine entering her house, coming through the front door. Underfoot there are layers of papers, food, underwear, shoes, books, clothes, house plants, kitchen spices, pots and pans and receipts. This is not to mention the granular minutia found at the bottom of drawers and cupboards. All of it split out on the floor in gritty piles and drifts. The rooms are choked with this shit. And sitting naked and alluring in the middle of this mess is Alice Gilstrap herself. As I enter the room she is in, I smell something burning. I have wood worthy of an old growth forest my pants. Alice Gilstrap in the middle of this landfill. Alice Gilstrap is helplessly lost in a blizzard of garbage. This is unacceptable, I say. Alice Gilstrap nods her head. She had chocolate cake on her face and hands. Something will have to be done, she relies.