Short Story: The Race

It was the day of the Company-sponsored Relay Race, and your team was called The Reluctants. Your team was filled with people like you: people who didn’t want to participate in The Race, but were coerced into it by the The Company and the reigning team from years’ past, called The Supervisors. They said that participating in The Race would be “good for Company morale.”

Your team just wanted to stay home and be with their families.

But The Company and The Supervisors insisted, so your team of The Reluctants were dragged from your homes and onto The Field to participate in The Race. There were 12 of you per team, and the rules were simple enough: the 12 Runners from each team were spread out along the track and the first Runner was given a Baton. Each subsequent Runner was to run to the next Runner and pass them the Baton, at which time, that Runner would continue the race and pass the Baton, et cetera, et cetera, until the race was through. The winning team was promised first pick of the new offices, supplies, chairs, and other comforts that would make working for The Company much more leisurely. The losing team would get whatever was left over—or in most cases, use whatever dilapidated paraphernalia was handed down from previous years of The Company’s existence. Suffice to say, said supplies and paraphernalia were not coveted by many, and savored by even fewer.

On the day of The Race, your team of The Reluctants were issued your uniforms by The Company via The Supervisors—Black Shorts and Black tank tops and whatever running shoes you happened to have in your possession. Some of you did not own running shoes, so you ran in loafers. The Supervisors also had uniforms issued by The Company. Their uniforms were made from polyester and had an emblem of a White Lion embroidered on their backs. Their shoes were manufactured by the luxury athletic division of The Company. Your team were told that the stronger runners were with you, so this division of resources was considered fair.

At the start of The Race, your runner lined up with their runner, and The Referee from The Company raised his starting gun to the sky. Just before The Referee pulled the trigger, the runner from The Supervisors shackled your runner’s ankles together, shortening the distance of their step. The Referee saw this and paid no mind: he fired the gun and the runner from The Supervisors tore off at a leisurely pace. Very swiftly, he closed the gap between himself and the second runner on their team. Your runner from The Reluctants shuffled as fast as possible to hand off their baton, but by the time they’d passed it off, the third runner from The Supervisors was already halfway through the leg of his race.

As your team’s second runner proceeded along the track, they noticed that The Supervisors had placed obstacles on your side of the race track, slowing your runner down as they climbed, jumped, and crawled through their leg of the race. Your second runner finished, and by now, The Supervisors had a very comfortable lead on your team. In fact, The Supervisors’s runner was merely walking; sauntering happily towards the next baton recipient in this 12-person relay race.

This continued until The Race concluded, and to no one’s surprise, The Supervisors finished first. As The Anchor of The Reluctants, you protested to The Supervisors saying that they had cheated at the start of The Race and very much throughout the course of The Race itself. The Supervisors pointed to your later racers and to you, saying that The Supervisors had stopped cheating and your later racers had every opportunity to catch up. More, you protested and shouted to The Referee that The Race was rigged from the start. The Referee shrugged his shoulders and unenthusiastically asked The Company what he should do. The Company shrugged their shoulders and enthusiastically awarded The Supervisors with the promised prize. They said to you, “Better luck next time.”

You pointed to your racers—tired, broken, shackled—and demanded a do-over of The Race, this time with fair stakes. The Company told you that there was nothing they could do. The Anchor from The Supervisors came over and extended his hand to you, saying that he was sorry that the first racers from The Supervisors cheated. You refused to shake his hand, saying that it wasn’t just the first racers that had cheated. All but the last two had interfered with their opposite racers’ progress, and just because the last two Supervisors hadn’t cheated, it didn’t make the race fair. The Supervisors told you that everyone should just try to get along and move forward from the results of The Race. They told you that the next one would be fair.

But for the next year, your team of The Reluctants had to deal with broken equipment, cubicles instead of offices, and the scraps of whatever supplies could be handed down to you from the bottom of the barrel. Over time, you and the former members of The Reluctants were chastised by The Company for having poor work performance. You reminded The Company that you and your colleagues were members of The Reluctants, and therefore were working under worse working conditions than that of The Supervisors.

The Company told you that they there were no teams anymore. The Race was over. Why did you keep bringing up The Race? They called you lazy. They called you entitled. They pointed to the air-conditioned offices and told you that the coworkers in those areas simply tried harder and if you tried as hard as they did, you could have an air-conditioned office, too. You reminded The Company that the only way they got there was because they were from the The Supervisors’s team. The Company told you to stop talking about The Race. They told you it was an unproductive conversation.

You started to tell others about the unfairness of The Company. You told them about how you were reprimanded for having a harder time than the people from The Supervisors. You told them about The Race. You showed people how your team was set up to fail from the start, and when you did fail, The Company told you it was your fault. Some people agreed with you. Some people rejected your ideas. You didn’t ask for much. You didn’t ask for The Supervisors to be kicked out of their offices. All you asked for was that The Company recognize the results of The Race and maybe build some more offices for your team members. You were told that it was logistically too expensive. You were told that what you had was enough. And when some of The Reluctants finally worked their way into the offices of The Supervisors, The Company pointed at them and said, “See? Why can’t you do it?”

Exhausted by your lamentations, you conceded defeat. You lost any hope of seeing the damage to your career repaired. But you did seek to teach your children about The Race. You wanted to leave them with a cautionary tale so that they might understand the critical injustice and try to make The Company better, in time. And by the time word got out that The Supervisors’s children were learning about your Critical Race Theory, The Supervisors were the ones running The Company.