Now We Have Unfilled Holes

The industrial park tucked away in the folds of the ghetto was built during more prosperous times, when business boomed throughout the city.

Back then, just showing up every day on time ready to work could earn a fellow a decent retirement from the place he started at 18. He could buy a house and a car with that money. He could support a family.

He wouldn’t have known or cared who owned the buildings, or what ulterior purposes they served when all the workers left for the night.

He never would have thought of trawling the retention ponds for bodies; or asked if there was something more than sand and stone mixed in with the concrete foundations; or questioned the tough guys in suits that occasionally wandered in to talk to the union stewards and other assorted functionaries—though he might have noted their nervous dispositions and thought it better not to ask.

Industries built on blood and bone hide the cost of progress, spawn ghosts like toxic vapors from a slow-burning chemical reaction.

It’s hard telling where, when, or how they might manifest, but these malevolent spirits are always looking for a way to draw others into their fold.

***** * *****

The intercom beeped.

An empty hiss permeated the sounds of mechanical lifts raising and lowering, trucks rumbling and grumbling their dirty diesel dreams as they pulled in and out of the docks, workers hollering and hurling epithets.  

After a long pause, a soft but sharp female voice interrupted the static.

“John,” another long, crackling pause, “John, call extension 1717.” Hiss. Crackle. “John, call extension 1717.”

John didn’t want to call extension 1717.

A page from Edith was never a good thing. It meant something was wrong. Someone fucked up. Most likely the one being paged.

Nevertheless, assured that health care and food on the table for his kids was worth braving the fires of Hell, he picked up the phone and dialed 1717, consoling himself that Edith’s grating tone was a lesser evil.

“John?”

“The one and only.”

“Cute. Listen, that shipment of dildoes you signed in was short. Did you count the dildoes?”

Health care, John reminded himself inwardly. Bobbi and little Johnny need health care.

“We were really, um, getting slammed back there yesterday, Edith,” he said out loud and then choked down his own laughter before it could escape. “It looked like the usual, um,” he coughed, “load, so no, I did not take the time to count each individual—ahem!—dildo.”

“Well, John, you should have at least peeled off the top layer to see what was underneath! They stacked them all wrong and the bottom layer was short and now we’ve got unfilled holes in our inventory because the system thought we were stocked above our reorder point! You know your job as a receiver includes verifying the quantity and quality of everything we take in! You know that’s your responsibility?”

“Yes, um—ahem!—I know that I’m to blame for all these, um,” John was shaking and biting his lower lip, “unfilled holes. As the, um, receiver. Taking in all that weight. Yeah. Got it.”

Edith didn’t get it, though.

John used to wonder if she was putting him on with shit like this, but he learned over the years that she was, as his grandfather used to say, serious as a heart attack.

“John, this is the third time in as many months that you’ve made this mistake. We’re a shipping warehouse that takes weight in from all sorts of customers and it’s up to us to make sure it’s right when it comes and that it ships to where it’s going. It doesn’t matter if it’s dildoes or doilies, John, assuring those orders get shipped pays our bills and yours, right? You get that?”

“Sure do, Edith. Sorry. I’ll be more diligent in the future,” John replied, red-faced and teary-eyed from holding in laughter. He was somewhat relieved at her cutting tone because it helped him contain himself, but at the same time he wanted to call her out.

She could use one of those dildoes on herself if she thought he had time to meticulously count every item that comes in, from vendors who are never on schedule, while juggling a dozen other responsibilities.

She had a business degree and never worked on the floor a day in her pampered life. More than one person told her so. It didn’t matter, though. It made no impression whatsoever. The last two people who called Edith out got sent home with no return invitation.

Multiple complaints to HR only resulted in icky all-hands-on-deck training meetings with third-party grifters selling anger management and conflict resolution techniques which were about as effective as crystals and essential oils from a New Age shop.

John figured every workplace had an Edith. Only an Edith would care enough about the job to make sure it gets done because she obviously doesn’t care at all whether people like her or if she has a life outside the place.

It might even be argued that every workplace needs an Edith, because the Johns of the world just want to get paid and go home, but the Ediths are the only ones who think a few unfilled holes will be the end of the business.

And who knows? Maybe Grandma Greta’s bad review for her unreceived package is the spark that chain reacts into the fall of a shipping empire.

John didn’t know, and he didn’t care. But Edith sure did.

John realized he’d been having these thoughts while gripping the phone, listening to the hiss on the line and the hum in the atmosphere.

And Edith’s breathing. Why did she pause so long? “Edith? You still there?”

“Diligence is appreciated but basic intelligence is required first, right?” Edith went on as if there’d been no pause. “You can count?”

“Ten fingers and ten toes last time I checked,” John said through gritted teeth.

“And one tiny dick and one bald spot you cover up with that silly ball cap and one wasted life raising two kids who are as stupid as you are, right John?”

He stood there listening for what seemed an impossibly long time, just holding the phone and breathing. He could hear her breathing on the other end. He was shaking still but not with laughter. Finally, in as measured a tone as he could muster: “What did you say?”

“I said don’t let it happen again.” She hung up.

He stood there for a long time listening to the empty hiss of the line. There were no dial tones anymore. Even the land lines run through digital systems now. Ones and zeros didn’t seem to care about making a lot of noise.

They just hiss in your ear like certain uppity bitches, John thought, slowly resting the phone back into its place on the wall.

He was still shaking. It wasn’t the crack about the size of his dick or his bald spot that pushed him over the edge. Nothing there that offended him anymore than the bullshit that came out of the bully’s mouth on the playground or, later, the belligerent drunk at the bar.

If John could refrain from jacking those jaws, he could shake his head, walk away from his mentally disordered boss, and live to work another eight-hour day.

But she’d called his kids stupid. That’s wrong and he was going to look her in the eye and tell her as much.

John took a few deep breaths. He needed to settle himself, so he could say what he had to say calmly.

Edith’s office was up a flight of stairs on the other side of the warehouse. As he walked from the receiving dock, weaving his way through twenty-foot-high racks laden with bric-a-brac, he took out his phone to ready the voice recorder.

He’d let her know he was recording. Maybe that would keep them both civil.

This is why he didn’t see Betsy.

She was on her forklift, but she was not awake.

She wasn’t even alive.

Betsy’s co-workers secretly ordered a cake with a plan to send her off on her last day, which was less than a week away. Retirement beckoned after over forty years hopping from one job to another.

Any time there was a discussion about the economy, Betsy would wisecrack: “Economy? What’s economic about it?” 

Betsy didn’t know she had an aneurysm.

She felt funny just long enough to register something was wrong, but not long enough to let off the gas.

She slumped forward and fell sideways, held to the seat by the lap belt, hanging by her waist off the side.

The wheel turned with her sagging body and the lift veered into one of the racks.

John looked up just in time to see the metal crumple and twist between the forks, to hear bolts snap as the rails bent and got trapped beneath the mast.

One rail snapped in two and became a spear, puncturing Betsy’s neck. The blood sprayed from her jugular vein as the racks fell like dominoes.

John turned to run, but it was too late.

Before the pallet of dildoes crashed down to bury him he had one simple, indignant thought: They’re all there! We didn’t run out!

***** * *****

“John was a good worker. He made mistakes sometimes but was always receptive to working through problems. I’ll be more diligent in the future, he would say, and he always was. We’re going to miss him, and Betsy,” Edith said to the remaining crew. “I rarely take days off, as you know, so it was quite a shock to come in this morning and hear the bad news. I can’t help but feel that if I’d been here yesterday, it might have been different.”

Most people in the crew just felt sad. John and Betsy were loved by their peers.

Sarah, however, marked the way that Edith evaluated John as nothing more than the product of his work output. He used to always say, when speaking of Edith’s tirades, “I work to live, I don’t live to work. I wish she’d get that.” 

But there was no point in telling Edith.

“We’ve still got a crew cleaning up the wreckage, and, as if this isn’t all bad enough, an OSHA investigation pending. We’re behind on orders! We were closed yesterday afternoon and today, and now we have unfilled holes in our inventory! So let’s get back to work, folks! If you want to contribute to the funeral funds, see Sarah in the office on break!”

They dispersed, all but Edith wondering whether it was worth trudging through another day just to make someone else more money than they’d ever get paid.

No one really knows which day will be their last.

John and Betsy would have understood. What’s economic about it?

***** * *****

Sometimes, when all the lights are off and all the people are gone, the intercom beeps.

Beneath the hiss of dead air, a ghost chorus whispers, intoning an ancient lesson that never fails—to fall on deaf ears.

Progress, they sob, is not prosperity.