The World’s Most Powerful Man?

Mervin looked at the number on the bright red door. Number 21A. He was unimpressed.

He was surprised that the job agency had provided him so quickly with this job, considering he’d only walked into their offices that morning on the off-chance something was available. He hadn’t even provided his qualifications and had been told this position was ideal. All he needed was some basic people skills, they said.

Obligingly, he followed the scribbled directions to this red door, in a squalid-looking side street in a part of town he wouldn’t normally visit. In fact, the brightness of the door made it look a little out of place to the dustbins, litter and other scattered ‘articles’ that lay in the road. He pressed the buzzer, and, eventually, a muffled voice was heard.

“Yes”

“I’m from the agency,” Mervin spoke in a very quiet voice. After a few very loud crackles from the intercom, another voice was heard.

“Enter”

The door clicked, and Mervin pushed it inwards as he entered a long, dark corridor. He walked to another door at the end, which was fully open. He could see a woman in a tweed jacket sitting at a desk inside this room, which was lit better than the corridor.

He entered the room, and simply said “Hello”

The woman behind the desk quickly removed from her mouth the piece of chewing gum she was carelessly chewing as he entered, and threw it into a waste paper basket beside her desk.

“Oh. Hello. I’m Marsha. We’ve been expecting you. This way, sir.” She gushed, buttoning up her jacket as she stood up. She placed a pair of dark rimmed glasses on her face, and quickly touched up her lipstick, which was as bright as the front door.

She led Mervin through another door, which was at the side of the desk and he hadn’t noticed it before. The light from the room was glaring off a highly polished plaque that was on this door, and Mervin couldn’t make out the name that was on it.

“This is your office” Marsha ushered Mervin into the very large room. She gestured to a desk at the front of the room. “I’ll let the department know that you are here.”

Mervin sat behind the large, impressive looking wooden desk, so large in fact, that it must have been brought into the room as the building was being built. It would never have fit through the door or the window. In front of the desk were rows of empty chairs. He looked at a thick folder that was on his desk.

His heart missed a beat as he read the words that were on the front of this folder. ‘For the eyes of the First International Minister only’.

He heard Marsha speaking on her phone. “Prime Minister, your new internal and international improvement commissioners are here, as are the leaders from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. And his Most High Excellency, the First International Minister of the Global Improvement Agency and Worldwide Assembly, is in his office, with his instructions for all of the countries of the world.”

Mervin slumped behind his desk.

“Basic people skills…” He mumbled, as one by one all of the world’s leaders filed into the room and started taking seats in front of the desk.