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Being a writer at Screwed Times meant daily browbeating and humiliation, but it was particularly punishing on Mondays at 3 p.m. A few months after I was hired, we got a new editor-in-chief, whom I'll call Buck. Buck decided to make the weekly staff meeting more relaxed and congenial, just like the ones at the paper where he used to work. He ordered pizza.

For a bunch of underpaid writers, this was in fact something of a treat. It wasn't long, however, before Buck began to complain bitterly about the price. He instructed his assistant to comparison shop and order the cheapest pizza available. Soon, he cut back to just one pizza pie, even though it meant there wouldn't be enough to go around. If you wanted a slice of the undercooked, value-priced pizza,you had to act fast. Someone was always left out and Buck seemed to take delight in the vagaries of the pie chart.

Beyond pizza pettiness, Buck showed little respect for journalistic ethics, and even less respect for employees and readers of the so-called alternative newspaper. He referred to children of divorce coming from "broken" homes, tittered like a schoolboy at any intimation of sex (particularly oral sex) and broke into a mocking lisp when he discussed gays in the Boy Scouts. About the only alternative thing he did support was the copious use of the word "fuck" in print and conversation -- as noun, adjective, and verb.

To maintain my sanity, I often took refuge in an actual office located near my grim, windowless work station. The office remained vacant, its door ajar as if to taunt me. One day, we were promised, it would house an editor who would be hired to ease our work load.

Some days I would sneak in to stare out the rare window. Below, the space between buildings formed a courtyard of sorts, dominated by a large, loud air conditioning unit. Like its employees, Screwed Times' AC always worked overtime, so the office was frigid year-round while the outdoor area where we went to smoke, eat lunch, or have private conversations reverberated with the earsplitting whir of the mammoth air conditioning unit. Standing on the other side of the double-paned glass, I was sealed off from the sounds. From my second-story perch the leaves that fluttered about the unit's vents were as silent and beautiful as fish in an aquarium.

I had to hurry back to my cube whenever Buck was near, but I knew I could always return. The empty office would be occupied only, as one co-worker put it, "When Prancey the office unicorn comes whinnying and galloping through." Prancey was our own Great Pumpkin, symbol of all we waited for that never came. At Screwed Times we waited for a lot: raises, praise for good work, or satisfaction that we could finally meet our ever-shifting deadlines and quotas.

Thus, Prancey's presence could always be felt; she was the ghost of unrequited hope, a fantasy fed on imaginary grains in a shed next to the air-conditioner. Her stall, we mused, was mucked out by fairies, and one day they would set Prancey free. She'd rear up on her hind legs and gallop to the second floor, a rainbow trailing from her windswept mane, pixie dust sprinkling in her midst.

We waited for the day when we could quit.

Instead, the firings came. The reason was always the same. Buck sacked award-winning writers and staff on account of a "bad vibe in the office." Screwed Times is located, appropriately, in a "right-to-work" state, which is also, apparently, a Bermuda Triangle of bad vibes.

I've since mucked out my own stall but the vibe, I'm told, remains. Employees still feel screwed, the office air is still unbearably cold, and Prancey, alas, never came.

Amy Roe is a freelance writer, which means she can stare out the window whenever she wants.

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