“Misloads cost the drivers time. Time away from their families-”

Oliver’s zombie-gaze wandered away from his scolding boss. She was starting to imitate a broken record. Was he in the worst time loop ever? And naturally, Brooklyn couldn’t be genuinely constructive or even accidentally productive with the rant. The level of incompetence was astounding…

How many layers of incompetence am I even in right now?

Huh… He was being ineffectually reprimanded for mis-stacking boxes. He was in too much of a hurry to put them in precise numerical order inside the three trucks he was supposed to be loading. He was in too much of a hurry, both because he sucked at this particular task, and because the company was being too tight with its budget to expand and thus handle current capacity. Oh, and because they were also increasing the belt speeds in order to get all the boxes out in time for the end of the shift. So, call that 3 cases of incompetence for them, and 1 for himself.

So not a job for ADD. I need challenges, not mistake inducing monotony.

He glanced over at the results: A pile of boxes overflowing above and around the rails and plummeting onto the walkway. They would do a great job if the belt speed was being properly utilized instead of rushed in a ridiculous attempt to prevent overtime. Hmmm. Call it two more for them since they blamed the entire line of workers for not being fast enough.

Of course, his trucks were being covered by neighbors, while he was being passively aggressively chewed out. Score 7-1. Which meant they were now covering five cars each, unless they shifted someone further down the belt to make several people cover 4 trucks… Not like there is even a right choice that would make much difference this deep into bad decisions.

“I mean, I just can’t understand-”

At least it's a problem you're well acquainted with.

“…how you can care so little about the driver's time.”

Openly prioritizes a group of employees over others… to a disturbing level. I get that they have a higher salary than us, but this is near fanatical levels of taking from Peter to give to Paul. But don’t let Paul have too much either! He smirked at the thought. All hail the bottom line. All hail th..

“This is funny to you? Wasting the driver's time with misloads!?!?”

Woops. Smirking while being chewed out probably wasn’t the best idea. He avoided the temptation to check the time with his phone.

No need to draw attention to the fact that his exception to the ‘no phones’ rule was getting flimsier these days, with ‘potential family medical emergency’ having less legitimacy with an officially healthy child at home.

Oh! 9 and 10. No one has time to ‘swap sim cards into a phone being shipped’ and if that was the intention they should just bring their sim card, not swap phones with one being shipped. Hmm, that could be 11. Probably shouldn’t count, but then they shouldn’t be capable of operating while this incompetent and stay in the black either. Plus, music was the only way to make the day go by faster, and keep his mind focused enough not to make horrible amounts of mistakes.

“No, I just remembered something unrelated.”

At least that incompetency works for me. The ‘authorized to ignore the no-electronics rule’ which largely breaks the ENTIRE purpose. 12. Creating arbitrary restrictions and unevenly distributing them for employee frustration

She hardly seemed mollified but also appeared unable to articulate why her berating not getting proper attention angered her so.

She sighed and rested her hand on her hip. “Return to your trucks.”

Yeah, she wasn’t happy. Sucks for her. At least now he could actually do his job, and not have others covering more than their fair share. Well, more than they were ‘supposed’ to handle anyways.

His mind gradually blanked as he made a stack of boxes for each of the three trucks he was responsible for. Then matched the tailing numbers to locations within each truck.

He picked up the first stack and mentally repeated the list of shelf-location numbers: 5023, 6067, 2845, 1783, 8345. Dropping numbers as he placed boxes.

5023, So near the start of the second half of the upper left shelf: Done. Then near the start of the second half of the bottom left shelf, Followed by 2845, near the end of the first half of the lower left shelf.

As always translating the numbers into sections, turning to the appropriate section, then placing/tossing it into mostly numerical order within that location. Then back out to the belt. Occasionally slowed too much by previous boxes, his mind blanking, or misremembering the list or other factors and so having to re-evaluate on the run.

He exited the back of the second car to see the third stack rolling down the belt far past the point of being worth retrieving. Even further than he had it mentally placed while in the truck. Damn them and their increased belt speeds. Always threw off his mental timing.

12 Incompetencies? Probably 12. Best not forget 12, 12, 12, 12.

This was going to be such a long day….As always.

He noted the unsorted boxes fighting for belt real estate while only one splitter worked at the head of the line A glance confirmed the other was retrieving boxes off the ass end of the belt to cart back up to the start. Because if the belt already had more boxes than everyone could handle, then adding the missed boxes back in was sure to help speed things along. Not like the Splitters didn’t know that, but the supervisor had probably told them to. 13

A sup came by and told him off for having an earbud in, and checked that he had a permit to have a phone on him.

Oh, I like this song. I might have quit weeks ago if the red tape didn’t give me this one benefit. The level of tedium that comes with remembering numbers long enough to sort various mostly small packages before grabbing the next batch is horrifying. 14 for the general rule against electronics and 15! For the poorly implemented yet frustratingly unbalanced loophole for people that aren't in my situation. No wait, I counted that already.

Still 14, but screw OSHA too! Overzealous bastards probably have some poorly interpreted rule about it that encourages this nonsense. Or just their general attitude. But of course the letter is followed while the spirit of the rules falls a bit flat. Probably vastly more the company’s fault than OSHA honestly.

He noted the additional boxes as the supervisor stood at the head of the belt and chewed out the Splitters for having a cart full of ‘missed’ boxes but not adding them to the already overflowing the belt.. Welp, that would mean the boxes would be in even more disarray as more Splitter time was diverted to adding boxes instead of sorting them. 15

He both delighted and groaned as the cumbersome boxes started coming. Boxes that were too large or oddly shaped to go through normal sorting, and instead had to be manually loaded onto the head of the belt. If they were here that meant the day was almost over, but it also meant he would need to wrestle the damn things off the belt, then back onto the truck after the small stuff was out of the way.

The supervisor was yelling at people to load the ‘cumbers.’ Brilliant. Tripping hazards and boxes they needed to climb over were sure to increase load times. 16 And 17! For once again ducking OSHA rules the wrong damn way.

The supervisor finally got to yelling at him specifically, demanding he load some commercially sized pop-up tent, which only had room to be laid in length ways down the truck. So now he was forced to stomp across it to get to anything. Plus he'd also been forced to load some giant box in one of the other cars that he had to constantly squeeze past. 18

At some point, he started tossing any boxes that went up front over that stupid cumbersome box. There wasn’t any room up front to sort them anyways.

One of his drivers came in and started sorting the truck to his liking, or at least as best he could with what was now an unreachable mess. Shortly after, the other two drivers showed up

The belt was down to the barest trickle and the last of the cumbersomes started getting loaded with the help of the drivers. Some had naturally fallen in ways that made them tricky to get out from between the trucks.

Finally the supervisor released him for the day. He looked for some of his belt-mates as he grabbed his personals; (a jacket and package of jerky for snack during break) from under the raised walkway. He caught up with them and chatted/griped about various things as they clocked out and left.

He thought about the incompetencies he had counted. 18 seemed short. What had he overlooked?

The sun started a lovely glare directly into his eyes on the next turn. Does seem like they should time it so the trucks leave at a time other than rush hour. Hmm, but I guess they often need a full day for deliveries. Guess I can’t count that.

Brittany was already gone as usual when he got back. He felt awful thinking about how she had worked even as she had been getting later into the pregnancy. He checked for job openings for himself, and started looking for @home or work for her, or himself so at least one of them could be home to care for Presh when he was born. She likewise was looking for both of them. It could be kind of a nice change of mentality to look for each other instead of themselves. And at this point, it wasn’t like either of them would have many complaints about a poor-fitting job being found

He didn’t find much but there were at least some jobs that looked like they would only be mind numbingly boring instead of both mind-numbing and… Frustrating? High paced? Individuality crushing? Hmmm… Stockholm-y? Yeah, that's a good phrase for this job, but minus the sympathizing.

The next day was Thursday; not much of a line for the clock, but he still got to talk to his belt-mates before things got started. The industrious ones were all looking at other job opportunities that weren’t such a dead end. Steve, a man in his 40s, just got in with a company looking for an operator for some kind of CNC plasma cutter predecessor. A position that he called looking for a needle in a haystack, and I’m the needle.’ Nothing official with them yet, but he expected to be a shoe-in.

They were of course all exceedingly happy for him. Especially since the company had been dicking him about since he got there with promises of promotions, then quietly passed him by when a position opened up. He seems to think the person who got the job was incompetent as well, which was utterly unsurprising. Oh, that would make… 19 wouldn’t it? Yeah, stack on top of that:I’ve watched the competent supervisors get pushed out for ‘not having been promoted internally’ without anyone ever actually telling them that is why they are being hassled to their face. The way the soups were talking as they said bye to the belt, they had greener pastures waiting for them as well.

Not a hard bar to set honestly. Call it 20 for pushing out the capable, and 21 for being adamant on holding jobs for incompetents. The way those in the know told it, this was a new location, and all the other locations moved their most incompetent here so they wouldn’t have to deal with them.

Break came and went, mostly discussing Steve's upcoming job some more. Then back to work. The day proceeded as frustratingly as normal, with no clocks to tell the time by, (unless he stopped and pulled out his phone, and that would surely be considered ‘unacceptable’)and the sups insisting from halfway through the day that there was ‘only 5 minutes left’ and to hurry and load the cumbersome.

22: Actively building mistrust. 23: Misusing ‘burst to the finish mentality’ to exhaust employees before the end…. and 24: Trying to squeeze employees for all they are worth, instead of earning their all. Bastards.

Friday came and went with the kind of fervent slowness that only comes from knowing it's the last day of the week at a horrible job, and a weekend is near. Despite yet another nearly endless day. He finally got out and made it home.

The job search had a result that looked good. Oliver practically quivered as he looked through the result and saw that someone was looking to hire temp, going on permanent help out as a Ranch-hand. He had experience with that. He could definitely do that. With as much exacting care as he could manage after his week, he filled out all the relevant info and put in an application.

He visibly quivered with excitement, and Brittany was excited to see things potentially looking up. It was far too early for so much hope, but they couldn’t help themselves. They celebrated with sweets, and by looking for a better paying, actually enjoyable job for her as well. For once the tension that had been between them since Presh was conceived felt distant; the love less tainted. But with a... known brittleness. They did not talk about how quickly their joy would turn if they had to give up their newfound hope. He practically couldn’t sleep that night. Especially since Presh picked up on the turbulent emotions.

He was startled awake by his phone ringing. His potential future employer had checked the job-site first thing and called as soon as he saw an applicant he thought had good potential. He wanted Oliver to drive over and do a trial-run as soon as he could get there. ChildOfCorn79’s listing stated he needed the extra hands and would pay him for time, even if he didn’t hire him.

Brittany was so much more energetic that morning than she had been in a long while. And he wasn’t much better. She threw a quick lunch together for him, while he took care of the morning ritual, getting cleaned and ready. Trying to dress respectably, but ready to do field work. A nice polo and comfortable jeans. When he came out, she was humming a tune while looking through @ home jobs for herself.

Once the initial flurry of activity was over, he took a moment to think of what he might have been forgetting. Pocket pats to confirm he had everything,then went back and grabbed his .357. It was the country, so he might run into snakes or wild hogs. Doing so unprepared would be shameful. It could stay in his little economic truck till it was needed, and a box of ammo with it. More than he would need for anything, but more convenient than throwing loose rounds in the console.

Brittany broke his heart all over again when he came back in to say goodbye. He hadn’t seen her face without worry for so long. He silently swore to himself he’d make sure there wasn’t a reason to see anything but happiness there ever again. Her goodbye kiss held promise of reward upon his return.

He swore to himself to get more condoms. One Bundle of love he couldn’t afford to feed was more than enough till they had their feet beneath them again. No more worry on that face, he promised himself again.

Oliver practically vibrated in his seat as he drove. The scenery, the sun, even the music seemed better. How long has it been since I’ve been able to pull my head off the grindstone and enjoy life? A year…and a half? Shit, it's been too long. He turned up the volume and let the upbeat tempo take him away.

He took his exit and drove five minutes before the nearby town came into sight. His employer would be another five minutes down a branching road. He was almost there.

Suddenly his phone and the GPS app complained about losing signal. Weird. This was a pretty flat area, and he'd had great coverage a second ago. He wasn't that far from the metroplex. Huh. Must be his phone. If this didn’t pan out, replacing it would be really damn annoying. Just one more thing he couldn’t afford.

Luckily, he had the forethought to study the route before he left,so he could probably find the place without too much trouble…