Francis leant down to examine the first few lines of a letter from a client's solicitor. The print was too small for him to read and he put it in a file that would be air-mailed to a hot country, where it would be read and typed up in a factory equipped with magnifying glasses. The next letter on the pile was hand written on eight sheets of loose paper. Francis selected his oldest stapler to fix them together, and having done so, dropped the stapler off the edge of his desk and into his open briefcase. A rush of excitement and fear squeezed his belly and throat and he stuffed the eight page letter in the appropriate file, crumpling it a little, and carried on working.

After sorting several more letters, Francis glanced around the office. It was a large room. A central corridor ran down the middle, with ten rows of desks on each side. Each row was made up of four desks with two workers were stationed on each side. Except for certain times when the shifts were changed, the office housed three hundred and twenty workers. Piles of rubble, old office equipment and sacks of cement blocked most of the windows and high wattage fluorescent lights allowed work to continue round the clock. Francis saw his colleagues took no notice of him and relaxed back into his chair.

He spent seven hours and forty five minutes each day in the office. He had joined the business four years ago as part of a corporate take-over, along with hundreds of others who had escaped redundancy too. This length of service has earned him two eight minute breaks per day.

On the first break, Francis got up and walked all the way down the room to one of the small rest areas that the company had provided on each floor of the building in the foyer between the lift and the office. He exchanged a glance with a old man in a dark brown suit who he had never acknowledged before.

Just before reaching the door, Francis took the stapler from his briefcase, and, leaning into a dark alcove, wedged it into a gap between a obsolete photocopier and a broken office chair that was balancing on top of the photocopier. The manoeuvre was complete in a couple of seconds, and the weak point in the tower was addressed. It was growing, breaking through damp patches in ceilings and edging through service stairwells and dark corners. Francis guessed that it must span several floors, at least.

No-one had been able to estimate when the tower would break through into the management offices on the top floors, which would depend on the precise number of floors between them and the management. On the way back to his desk, Francis admired his addition and remembered the day - not so long ago - when the plan was first explained to him.

'Don't you see, Francis? They’re scared of us.'

'How do you know?,' Francis had asked, 'we still haven't talked to them.'

'Because, Francis, they need us much more than we need them! They're nothing without us!'

The union, which apparently had workers from all parts of the company in membership, had resolved to meet the management and deliver a list of demands. The first demand was to lift the ban on talking, which had been imposed to maintain productivity and meant that all union business had to be conducted in the pub. When the time came, Francis hoped to be among the comrades that would climb the tower and take part in the meeting.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The next morning, Francis arrived, as usual, twenty four minutes early, at six minutes past eight. He glanced quickly into the alcove and saw an upside down table had been attached to the tower’s summit, with one rusty leg poking a hole in the polystyrene ceiling. He walked by quickly. At seventeen minutes past nine he looked around the office and remembered some more words from the pub.

'We own this business, Francis!'

At twelve minutes past eleven, when he was just about to take one of his rest breaks, Francis received an email.

Dear colleague,

You are no doubt aware of the importance we place in the flourishment of employees. You are the flowers of our business. We have made huge progress in this respect, and you will be pleased to hear that these efforts will continue. We want you to reach your full potential. All employees are encouraged to apply for jobs from the enclosed list of opportunities, and, through this process, we believe that staff can find roles that will allow them build on their individual strengths.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Bailey

Dr. Bailey was the company’s Director of Wellbeing and Resource Progression. Francis had received a number of emails from him during his time at the business and he followed the instructions exactly.

The next day, Francis worked hard until his mid morning break. When he walked past the tower, he noticed that the stapler had slipped out of its gap, causing the desk and broken office chair to fall off the photocopier and onto the floor. He stopped for a moment and looked into the alcove, forgetting that colleagues might be watching. He was looking at a photocopier, a chair and a table in a corner.