During the uncertainty about our jobs I liked to imagine what various people would do in the same position. Not, you know, what would Jane from Accounts Payable do? What would various famous people do? Though, to be fair to Jane, she would probably do something far more sensible and responsible than, say, Keith Richards who was one of my fictional reference points at this time of unsettling change. I think this was a way of trying to sift through what I wanted and make sense of the slightly conflicted set of emotions I was experiencing on an almost daily basis. It was all either romanticised notions of cashing out a big cheque and spending six months driving sea to shining sea across the States or it was a wildly conceived and wholly imagined dystopian future where I ended up selling my own organs on some dark web version of e-bay just to keep up my mortgage payments. I had quite a detailed view of the latter and had even factored in that my liver was depreciating fast in black market value as I soaked it in notes-of-cherry-and-oak reds and the occasional, more visceral, pleasures of a hastily banged out shot of tequila.

The list of celebs that I was mentally channeling for inspiration ran as follows:

1. Simon Sinek. Accepting that Sinek’s not really a celebrity in the conventional sense (i.e. he’s unlikely to feature in “Hello” any time soon giving a guided tour of his house and built in meditation garden) he does, however, seem to have adopted a position as the leadership guru for millennials and so I like to imagine his thought process. I suspect he would question the meaning in the employment: ask why you do what you do. I guess he’d probably wax lyrical about how ill equipped for perceived failure the current generation are after being raised to believe that everything they did was inherently awesome; a relentless childhood and adolescent torrent of praise, drowned in their parent’s good intentions. He’d get us all to put down our phones and stop checking Instagram quite so much too (and I had questioned some of my colleagues’ willingness to post selfies of their new interview outfits, not least because I’m pretty safe on stuff like that and definitely not about to rock up to audition for a new walk on part in some big corporate play wearing a presumably ironic Thundercats tee-shirt. Kudos to Kam in IT though who had worn his Game of Thrones “winter is here” tee every single day since consultation had been announced in his own silent, bone dry commentary).  I wasn’t so sure I bought all of Sinek’s shtick about the generational shift. It sounded a bit like people worrying about Elvis in the 50s to me. It’s not like the Boomers all turned out terrible and fucked up the world, is it? All that gyrating hip exposure didn’t over sexualise an entire generation and poison us all. There’d be signs. Apart from the whole Trump and Stormy Daniels thing. At the very least I’d be getting more sex than Donald Trump. Hey, Sinek, why aren’t I getting more sex than Donald Trump?
2. Jennifer Lawrence. Clearly I’m most interested in what the Katniss Everdeen version of J-Law would do. Less so the Red Sparrow version although a smattering of Russian and a working knowledge of ballet might come in useful if I figured that a career swerve towards the Bolshoi was my best chance of staving off unemployment. I am unlikely to figure this. To be honest it could just as easily have been Emilia Clarke slash Daenerys Targaryen but Jennifer’s experience in surviving a bloody everyone-for-them-self death match is what tipped it her way. Not that that’s how I’m thinking about the current situation. But if I was then the ability to shoot someone through the head with an arrow from two hundred yards might come in handy. That said, I suppose a trio of dragons and your own army of eunuchs would probably work too.
3. Rutger Hauer. This one is quite specific and is for when I’m imagining my leaving speech which I’ve taken the liberty of sketching out. It steals pretty shamelessly from the end of Bladerunner and goes a bit like this: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Changed toner in the photocopier, fingers glittering with ink powder, as you all just walked to the other end of the office to the other machine for three days straight rather than attempt it. Attacked the archive cupboard, shredder whirring and droning, as I destroyed the entirety of the departments’ output from 2003 to 2009 that somebody naively thought we might, one day, be asked for again. I’ve despaired as the new Director asked to see what we have on record from 2008 that might shed some light on current trading, trails of shredded paper scattered like guilty confetti on the floor around my desk. I’ve danced on the desks late in the evening after you all went home. The person that put up the sign reading “no, it’s just a bit startled” next to the “this door is alarmed” sign by the fire exit. That was me. All these moments will be lost. Like tears in rain. I am undecided on whether to deliver this stripped to the waist, soaking wet, and holding a dove. I feel the image would be powerful but the dove could make a bit of a mess in an enclosed space.
4. Tina Turner. I’m mainly interested in her journey from being controlled and dis-empowered by an over bearing authority figure to redefining her entire career on her own terms. It’s a pretty straightforward analogy, I’ll grant you, but it’s redemptive and motivating and there’s been precious little of that going around. Plus, she was an absolute force of nature throughout and if I were to reprise my desk dancing – not that there’s been much working late in the evening recently – then she has moves to burn.
5. Kevin Bacon. Not really. Just for the whole six degrees of separation thing. And he did stick it to the Man in Footloose. Mostly the six degrees thing.
6. Houdini. Because some days, quite a few days, I just wanted to disappear.

What would any of them do? I don’t think they’d have waited, that’s what I think they have in common, the point of similarity that binds my unlikely allies of conscience. From the rational to the angry to the accepting to the empowered to, well, to Kevin Bacon. Some days I try to listen to them all at once and some days one of them looms large in the foreground and bends my ear exclusively. They all tell it slightly differently but, to my ears, they all say the same thing. Don’t wait.

Most days I day dream of Houdini and packing myself into a wooden crate, decorated with a flourish by some glamorous assistant charged with covering the crate in a brightly coloured, woven tapestry. They’d come find me on the day they were finally ready to break the news. Come to tell me what had been decided for me. They’d come, whip away the cloth, prise open the box, only to find no trace of me. Just an empty space and a crumpled piece of fabric on the floor.