Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up as an insect and misses his early train. Soon the doorbell rings at his family’s apartment. Gregor brauchte nur das erste Grußwort des Besuchers zu hören und wußte schon, wer es war – der Prokurist selbst. Gregor only had to hear the visitor’s first word of greeting to know who it was. It was the chief clerk himself. Through the closed door of Gregor’s room, the chief clerk tells him: Ihre Leistungen in der letzten Zeit waren also sehr unbefriedigend. Your performance lately has been very unsatisfactory. Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) was first published in 1915.