A handbook is a list of everything a company has had to say out loud because somebody did the other thing. Forty pages is too many things. Here are the fourteen that matter, and the last five are about doors, because in a building like this one doors are most of what there is to know.
The Handbook, Condensed
1 · Hours
Seven to six, six days. The whistle goes at six. After the whistle the gate ledger closes its down column and a man who is below at that moment is below until morning, which is fine, and happens, and is why Aperture Row is on the second level.
2 · The gate
Mr. Pike has held the gate since 1951. You sign down, you sign up, and if you forget to sign up Mr. Pike will come and find you, because the columns are required to agree, and they have agreed every night but three.
3 · Pay
Fridays, in cash, from a tin. There is no cheque and there will be no cheque. The President has been asked four times.
4 · The descent
Eleven minutes. One lamp. Do not press the button twice. Talk to the man next to you; most don’t, and the ones who do are the ones Operations promotes.
5 · The third floor
The President’s door is always open. Do not use the door. Knock on the frame and wait, and he will shout, and the shout means come in. If the shout is at somebody else, come in anyway; that is how most of the good ideas in this building arrived.
6 · Metal
Nothing metal below the grill. Tools, coins, buckles, fillings. Dental is on the second floor and it is free and it will always be free and that is the whole of the company’s position on the grill.
7 · The windows
The observation windows are one-way. Do not wave. Do not speak to them. It is not a rule about who is behind them; it is a rule about the data, and the data is the reason for your wage.
8 · Complaints
Anyone may walk into the third-floor office and say anything to the man behind the desk. Anyone punished for doing so should report the punishment to the man behind the desk, who will deal with it personally, and has, four times.
9 · Leaving
Give notice or don’t. You will be paid to the end of the week either way. Personnel will close your file with the date you left, and will fill in the date, if it can.
10 · Doors, generally
Every door in this building opens from both sides. That is a policy, it is written on the plate at every landing, and Facilities inspects it monthly. If you find a door that opens from one side only, you have found a door that Facilities does not know about. See clause thirteen.
11 · Doors, closed
A closed chamber door means a chamber in use, a chamber being cleaned, or a chamber that has been closed. All three mean the same thing to you. Do not open it.
12 · Doors, panels
A wall panel is not a door and is not to be treated as one. The panels bolt from the outside for a reason, and if you find one bolted from the inside, do not unbolt it. Report it. Somebody will come. Somebody has come every time.
13 · Doors, not on the drawing
If you find a door, a room, a corridor or a landing that is not on the drawing you were issued, note where it is, leave the level, and give the drawing to Facilities with the position marked. Do not go through it to see what it is. Facilities knows what it is. Facilities is not saying.
14 · Doors, the one on the third floor
There is a second door in the President’s office. It is locked. Facilities has no key. It is not your concern and it is not, on the drawings, a door, and this clause is in the handbook because a man asked about it in 1955 and the President wanted it answered once, in writing, so that nobody would ask again. Nobody has.
Clauses ten through fourteen were the last five pages of the forty-page edition and the only five the President kept whole. Everything else he cut to a sentence.
He cut clause fifteen because he said it would frighten the new men. He is right. It frightened me and I typed it. — C.
The forty-page edition is in the second-floor cabinet, drawer two. Personnel has been asked eleven times whether it may be read and has answered eleven times that it may, and nobody has.
Form ASI-503. Read with the Rules of the Enrichment Center, ASI-308, which bind volunteers for one afternoon and personnel for good. Where this sheet and the rules disagree, the plate at the landing governs, because the plate is bolted to the wall and this sheet is not.