Boss is there when I get in. He knows my routine. He knows where I’ll be and when. It has been two years. Two years is enough for people to figure you out. Two years enough time for people to accept you?
There are 3 people in the employee break room. There aren’t usually 3 people in the break room. Someone new?
This is routine — and it doesn’t change, except for small disturbances, like when 2 became 3. A crowd.
I start texting but I won’t save it to drafts.
At work this feels so much like I’m not going to get through it. Feels so much like my last day and the shift ends and I end. Doom, death and all the grim stuff. It feels like I’m not awake. It feels like I’m stuck trying to figure out what this feels like.
The thing about work is that people have to be friendly.
Have to put on a grin, have to get along.
We’re employees.
The voice I hear when I walk in isn’t the boss’s, it’s a voice that I almost recognize. When I see where it came from, I understand why there are 3 people here instead of 2.
She remembers me.
I remember her. I feel a knot forming in my throat. When this happens I can’t talk very well.
Waking up to find that person that makes you so uncomfortable, like that person is you stuck out of time.
This one gets a half-dozen likes before I look away from the screen.
I don’t say hello because I have to put my lunch in the fridge.
This is what I always do. She should know. Why does she insist on making it difficult? Her voice is loud but the other two employees have something to talk about that doesn’t involve me, or her. They continue chatting and, looking at their faces, I think about a comment thread I had between only one other person. That person kept talking, kept commenting. I kept replying.
That person became a follower.
That person and I agreed with everything that was said.
Been a follower ever since.
“Zachary — you’re not going to believe it. It all happened so quickly! I was here early walking the mall before stores were open so I could plan out where to apply but then Jeffrey was sitting on one of the benches near the front of the store and saw me walking. He called me over and talked to me, but, but, but I didn’t even know! It’s crazy. I didn’t even know he was interviewing me for a second chance!”
The differences between rapport and a number of retweets.
I packed a sandwich today. I bought a bag of chips at the bodega on the way to work. They seem to know me at that bodega, which is why I go there. I don’t have to say anything. I don’t have to watch as they question my purchases. I purchase what I purchase, and sometimes they even know what I want.
I agree with her, “Yes.”
“What do you mean ‘yes’?”
“What you said,” I reiterate while gently pushing aside another employee’s lunch. Back corner of the top shelf of the fridge is where my lunch has been stored for over a year. I wonder what the employee meant by using my corner of the fridge.
I think about it while she continues talking.
She starts talking in the third person—
“I’m talking to myself and saying things like, ‘Veronica, why would you go back to places you can’t stand? Veronica, why would you work for Elite Aesthetics again, pushing stupid trendy wares for stupid trendy people? Veronica, you’re better than this.’ Zachary, you have no idea how many times I tried to get myself to believe it. I’m always saying, ‘Veronica, there are better jobs. Veronica, there are better lives with better people.’ They’re all more interesting and this is all so boring. But here I am and I’m so happy but I’m also so bummed out because doesn’t this make me spineless, going back to some job I swore off as career suicide?”
“Yes,” and then I add, “Veronica you’re right.”
“Maybe I should go back to school and get my master’s …”
Veronica holds onto my arm.
I don’t tell her to stop.
I tell her, “Yes,” in response to something else she said.
My stomach tightens, and it makes me lose my voice.
I think she asked me a question. I say the only thing I’ve said and she seems to not like it anymore. She squeezes my bicep.
She says, “What, you want me to leave you behind and become some big fancy business genius, a big-timer CEO?”
I blink twice. Look over at the other two employees.
I think about the food that took up my spot in the employee fridge.
Boss walks in and only has to look at me. I know.
I know that much. He didn’t need to say anything.
He didn’t need to call me over.
“Zachary, may I have a word?”
He can have a word, yes.
Veronica keeps talking but I’m not there to be talked to so that complicates things. I can still hear her voice as boss and I walk down the hall to his office. The room has a desk in it with three chairs and very little space. Space is so limited that he has to walk in first and then me second. We can’t both walk in. He has to squeeze around cabinets and stacks of office supplies and boxes to get to his seat behind the desk.
Then it’s my turn.
He starts talking.
I begin to understand something — he is faulting me for my absence.
I agree with him. I look down at the phone, see that I’m doing really well in terms of number of likes, few comments.
“You’ve been with the company for … twenty six months now …”
Is that a long time?
Should I have been with the company for less time, more time?
I can work on it.
There is a lecture about employee responsibility.
I hear bits and pieces. His voice has that way about it where it can blend so well with everything around me.
Wonder if someone can really memorize an entire ten minute lecture, word for word.
“Zachary, this is unacceptable behavior.”
I agree.
I apologize.
He says he understands, but that it can’t happen again.
I tell him it won’t and that I had to attend a funeral.
He sympathizes. “I understand, but you should have called. We wouldn’t have had to have this talk if you had just told me. You left us hanging here, short on staff on the busiest day of the week.”
I say something.
He accepts it.
“It’s understandable. We don’t need to remember phone numbers anymore …” He makes sure to give his name as he hands me a card, his business card, “and the email was appreciated. If even a little too late.”
Okay.
I take the card.
We sit there.
I think of something to say and I say it.
Then I leave.
I hear him say, “Oh … alright then.”
I go back to the break room to check on my food once before the shift starts. When I return to the counter, where I am tasked to greet customers and provide information about our products, Veronica is standing in the area where I am going to be standing.
She continues where she left off, talking.
I look at the time on my phone.
10 minutes before the store opens.
I set the phone next to the cash register, in the area of space where it is hidden behind pamphlets about Elite-brand e-cigarettes.
I like when I am tasked to stand at the counter. There are outlets, plenty of outlets, to charge phones, laptops, and other devices.
I can work the counter by myself.
I don’t need help. This is routine.
Day has begun by the time Veronica starts talking about yesterday and the days long before it.