My Case For Retributive Action

[Nemonymous]

MY CASE FOR RETRIBUTIVE ACTION – What is a “storefront office”? When reading this story before, I’ve taken this term for granted. Being a UK reader, I wonder if this is an American term.
This story, for me, is a fabricated improvisation where the fogs, spiders and other nightmares seem to appear out of nowhere – also the Kafkaesque office and the phobias/anxieties are formulaic. The narration is not so naturally believable or dream-like as some of TL’s other stories. The narrator only addresses a reader whom he seems to know in his own life, which rather un-involves other readers like myself. I am perhaps just another person like Ribello and Pilsen that the Narrator has not fully fathomed.
I like the pickle smell, & the smoking being banned because of it getting into the office’s forms. Actually, as a different reader, I might have noticed more readily that the story is its own venom, its poison moving in a vicious circle in a futile attempt to cure its own ills with an instantaneous vaccine that is itself.
And I shall emerge from reading it as the very reader whom the Narrator addresses – like waking up (hatching?) in metamorphosis as the nobby spider monster.... And that makes me want to hurry on to the next story in the book and read it to prevent falling asleep .... but .... I notice it’s only a Temporary Supervisor....

[Odalisque]

I think that a storefront office is one which looks (from the street) much like a shop. The Citizens Advice Bureau often has offices of this sort -- they are well suited to the public dropping in. When Victim Support Newham was to move premises in the late 90s, it was mooted that a storefront office should be sought, although (in the event) they failed to find such an office. (I think that it was at this point that I first heard the phrase "storefront office".) The only Victim Support storefront office I have actually visited is that of Camden (it's near Euston station) -- but I imagine that Victim Support have such premises in a number of places.

How useful a storefront office is to the Quine Organisation, I don't know. Perhaps the general public bring their forms in for processing...