legends · 2 min read ·
Welcome to the Night Shift
An orientation memo left on every new Clerk's desk. Nobody remembers writing it.
MURROW MUNICIPAL ARCHIVE OF VITAL RECORDS
Orientation for Night Staff — please read before your first shift
Welcome. We are glad you came down.
You will have noticed that nobody met you at the top of the stairs. This is normal. The day staff left in 1988 and the night staff have been, for the most part, filed. You report directly to the Archive. The Archive is a fair employer. It does not expect you to understand it. It expects you to follow procedure.
YOUR DUTIES
Receive Writs from the tubes. Read each one in full, silently. Stamp it RECEIVED (not RECORDED; that stamp is not yours). Place it in the out-tray. An Usher will collect it. Repeat.
YOUR HOURS
Your shift begins when you arrive and ends when you leave. Please do not be on the stairs between 03:00 and 03:33. The stairs are busier than they look.
YOUR DESK
Your desk was here before you. The lamp will be lit when you arrive; please do not switch it off. If you find notes in the margins of your manuals in a handwriting not your own, you may follow them. They have not been wrong yet.
YOUR SAFETY
The Archive has very few rules and it keeps them absolutely. A copy is taped above the stairwell. Learn them. In particular: never file your own name, never answer the internal telephone after 03:33, and never stamp anything VOID. If something in the stacks asks you who you are, tell it, clearly and correctly.
YOUR WELFARE
Tea is in the cupboard on Sub-Level Two. The kettle works if you are polite to it. The radio on Sub-Level Four receives one station, which plays dance music from 1987 and occasionally reads out names. You may listen. Please do not sing along with the names.
YOUR FUTURE
There are opportunities for advancement. Clerks who serve the Archive well are remembered — precisely, permanently and in full. That is more than most people in Murrow can say.
If you have any questions, write them on the back of this memo and leave it on your desk. You will find an answer in the morning.
Welcome to the Long Night.
— The Archive
On the back of the memo, in pencil, in a small slanted hand, a previous Clerk has written one question:
*How do I leave?*
Beneath it, in typewritten capitals, very neatly, the answer:
*THE SAME WAY YOU CAME IN. BUT FILED.*