My Own Voice Left A Voicemail Telling Me Not To Take The Job

The voicemail came in at 04:12 on a Tuesday. The caller ID is my own number.

The message is eleven seconds. It is me — my voice, my accent, the way I do that little intake of breath before I say something difficult. My mother listened to it and cried.

It says: "Don't take the job. It's not the money. It's the man on the third floor. Please."

I had, at that point, been offered a job. I had not told anybody outside my house. I had not signed anything. The salary was very good and I was going to take it.

I did not take it.

I want to be honest about why, because "a ghost told me" is a lie. I did not take it because I could not stop hearing the "please". It was not spooky. It was tired. It sounded like a man who has already had the argument several times and has run out of ways to put it.

Fourteen months later, the company was in the news. Not dramatically — it was a small item in the trade press and then a longer one in a real paper. A senior man, third floor, had done things to junior staff over a period of years, and the company had known, and the company had moved him rather than removed him.