Runaway Package

The air in this room is hot. No thermostat insight and the windows are open. The man on the other side of the desk is wearing a long-sleeve button-down, which makes me wonder if I’m hot or just nervous. The clicking on his mouse haunts me as he stares intently at his computer. “Ah, there you are.” He says. “Okay, so your resume says that you’ve only worked at your friend's job as a, what was it… Crystal salesman?”

I try to speak but my throat gets clogged up. “Um, yes, uh, it was my girlfriend’s business and we kinda broke up, so you know, I need a new job.” I try to chuckle my way out of the awkwardness but the man is not amused.

“Okay. What kind of work did you do while you were there?” He asks.

“Well, I did a couple of things. I mostly interacted with customers but during our downtime, I just kept the store clean and organized everything that needed to be organized.” I respond.

“I see. It also says here that you have a reference from somebody else who works here?”

Yeah, my buddy, Damien. He got hired a couple of months back. We went to high school together. We even-”

“I’m going to stop you right there. I’ll be perfectly blunt, I don’t care. We here at, FAST Corp just need what we call ‘boots on the ground’. As long as we have people willing to work, we can continue to run our operations smoothly. I have to ask these questions as a formality and it’s a huge pain in the ass. If it were up to me, I’d give you a vest and put you straight into the assembly line. That way I can enjoy my office in peace. Now, if you work hard and do your job right, you can get an office like mine. Is that what you want?”

“Well, I-”

“Of course you do. It’s a pretty sweet office. Now, lucky for you, we have a position open. Your job is going to be a package checker. It’s pretty simple, all you have to do is inspect the boxes that come down the line and make sure nothing is damaged inside or out. If it seems okay, you scan it and send it down the line. If not, you put the box onto a cart, and once the cart is full, you send the cart back to packaging and they will fix it. Sound easy enough?”

“Uh, yeah, that sounds great!” I exclaim gleefully. This job might just be a walk in the park after all. The man slides some paperwork across the desk and a pen for me to sign them. I make no hesitation to start signing away.

“So once you’ve signed all the papers acknowledging that you’ll be working full time for seven twenty-five an hour, you’ll only get three, one minute, bathroom breaks, any time spent over that allotted time will be a reduction in your pay. Three ten-minute breaks and one half-hour lunch. You should be good to go.”

“Actually, I have some questions,” I interject

“Don’t we all, what’s the meaning of life? Who knows. Now once you leave you’re going to find your supervisor Sarah, she’s great you’ll love her, and she is going to give you your vest and scanner. Once you have those, You’ll be ready to get started.”

“Wait, I start today?”

“You wanna make money, don’t you? Well, you’re never gonna get my office with that attitude. Now, enjoy your shift, and welcome to FAST Corp.”

“Alright, this is going to be your station. Do you have any questions?” Sarah asks.

“Well, I-”

“Good, your cart associate will be here any minute. Get to work.” She interrupts. She walks off with a sense of smug entitlement. I stand in front of a conveyor belt that looks old and dusty. There’s a strange smell in the warehouse that is hard to pinpoint the distinction. Suddenly, a loud buzzer goes off that scares me half to death and almost ruptures my eardrum. The conveyor belt moves a box up to where I’m standing. I grab the box, and carefully pick it up to examine it. “That’s a good box,” I mutter to myself. I set the box down and scan the barcode that’s lazily slapped on the top of it. The belt moves again sending that box away and replacing it with a new one.

“This job sucks doesn’t it?” A voice says behind me. I turn around to see Damien standing behind me leaning on a cart.

“Oh hey, what’s up dude!” I exclaim.

He wraps an arm over my shoulder. “Man, what’re you doing here? I told you to not apply here, this job will suck your spirit right out of you.” I try to scan the next box around his arm. I make it with just a hair and a new one is brought before me. Damien moves his arm and looks me in the eye.

“Yeah well, I needed a job to make some quick cash. I’ll be out by August.” I respond.

“You know who’s said that before? Every new person that works here!”

“Really? August must be the worst month for this place.”

“Whatever, if you’re gonna be here, I’m glad we’re gonna be working together. Maybe you can help me. I’ve been trying to get these zombies we call coworkers to start a strike with me. This place is the worst, we should be paid more for the amount of crap we have to put up with. I mean, every time you’re even a second late from your break they dock a minute from your paycheck. I mean what kind of shit is that?”

As Damien is talking, I scan the next box without looking. I hear my scanner beep, but a different sounding beep keeps playing. I look down at my scanner but it’s not making the noise. A radiant red glow emits from the box with a loud beeping that is now moving further away on the conveyor belt. The package is then pushed into a small tunnel. “Oh no,” I whisper to myself. “We have to stop the belt!” I tell Damien.

“We’re starting now? That’s the spirit!” He shouts. We both run down the warehouse trying to follow where the tunnel ends. I repeatedly yell for everyone to stop the belt. Meanwhile, Damien is behind me yelling to the other employees something I can’t quite make out. I can only hear a few words like corporate, corrupt, oppressive, and wages. It doesn’t matter, if that package is as dangerous as it looks, then I need to stop it.

Suddenly, a mix of supervisors and security officers walk in front of the path. “I need to stop the belt!” I scream as I push past them. I see the package coming out of the tunnel, but the belt suddenly speeds up and pushes the box further away. The red light from the box is even brighter and the beeping is getting faster. I run as fast as I can, but Damien flanks me on my right and we both fall onto the belt. As we recover, the belt sends us into another tunnel.

“Dude, I’ve always wondered where these things go,” Damien says. He might have jinxed us as the tunnel on the other side opens up to a room full of a series of weirdly elaborate slides. We both scream as we slide down the shute, bumping into the sides on every turn. The shute finally ends outside into a bin where the delivery trucks would be. We both groan and check to see if we’re okay. “Is it weird that I kinda want to do that again?” Damien moans. I look at him in disbelief, but I’m stopped in my tracks when I hear the beeping again. I look down and start throwing out other boxes that are in the way. Finally, I pick up the glowing red box and the beeping is getting even faster. It’s about to go off!

“It was nice knowing you man,” I say as I clutch the box close to my chest.

“Dude, is that what all this was about?” Damien takes the box from my hands and I flinch. He opens it up and shows me what’s inside. It’s a lighthouse with a red lightbulb inside. “Dude, these are alarm clocks. We’ve been getting a bunch back because they’re defective. They’ve been blinding people every time the alarm goes off. Sometimes people don’t take the battery out so the timer just went off.” I reach inside the box and pull out the very bright and rapidly beeping lighthouse. I chuck it at the ground and the light shattered causing it to turn off.

“Thank god, I thought someone was gonna get hurt,” I say relieved. At that moment a security guard is thrown from a window on fire and he runs away screaming. Damien and I get out of the bin and look inside the window. A massive riot is happening inside. Some workers are fighting with security, some are destroying everything around them, and some are just throwing managers and supervisors out of their offices. “What the hell is going on?” I shout.

“The revolution,” Damien says with a wide smile and fire in his eyes.

“So, I need to look for a new job then,” I respond.

“Oh, most definitely,” Damien says, still admiring the chaos. I take off my vest and drop it on the ground. I walk to my car and take a deep breath, then I start it drive off the lot. As I exit the security gate, I pass by three fire trucks, eight police cars, and two swat vans. I think nothing of it and head home. I’m ready to just go to bed.