We made it to Friday with no skips, although a couple were near misses. So once more, timers set to fifteen minutes and off we go.
No clue where this came from.
Friday, March 21st: He set the box down.
He set the box down. It was heavier than he expected. He eyed the box with a certain wariness. The side said dishes. ‘How heavy could dishes be?’ he thought.
“No use pausing to admire,” Stan said as he passed. “We have a whole truck to unload.”
Brian nodded. He turned around, leaving the extraordinarily heavy box of dishes behind. He walked out of the propped open door to the moving truck. It was a semi trailer that took up most of the block. Brian knew that after they unloaded this households worth of goods there were several more on the truck that he would have to unload.
He sighed and walked as slow as he thought he could get away with. The other movers passed him but he didn’t care. He ignored the sideways looks they gave him. When he was in the van, he looked at the labels and chose a box marked blankets as his next haul. He ignored the fact that the others were using dollies to ferry multiple boxes in at a time and picked up the box. Compared to the dishes box it felt light enough to almost be empty.
He took it into the house and leisurely returned to pick up various other light items. Pillows were rapidly becoming his favorite. He noticed that other pursed their lips and grunted as they saw him working, but Brian was well practiced in ignoring them. ‘They are just jealous they didn’t think of this themselves.’
He smiled smugly as he passed two of his coworkers sweating as they carried a sofa up the steps.
‘Too bad they aren’t as smart as I am.’
In due time the van was unloaded and everyone gathered the belts and dollies and they went off to their next destination. It was dark by the time the truck was fully unloaded and they went back to the office. Thir supervisor went into turn in the paperwork and came out a moment later.
“That’s it for the night, tomorrow we start at six am, get some sleep,” Stan told them. “Brian, boss wants a word before you go.”
Brian nodded. ‘Probably noticed how smart I was and wants to promote me to supervising,’ Brian thought. He wasn’t surprised. He knew his talents lay in the managerial side of things. He knew that unlike Stan he wouldn’t join in the unloading, he would simply let his underlings carry his orders out. As he went inside, Brian wondered if he would soon out rank Stan. As he felt the man watching him throughout the day, he would take great delight in that.
Brian went inside and found his Boss, Mr. Peterson sitting at the desk. He looked up. “I’ll make this short,” Peterson said. “As I understand it has been a long day. As you know you were here on a trial basis. We have decided the trial has ended. We do not require your services. Payment for today’s work has been electronically sent to your provided bank account. You need not come in again.”
“I don’t need to come in again?” Brian repeated.
“Your contract has been terminated,” Peterson repeated. He spoke slowly as though uncertain Brian could process the words.
“You are firing me?” Brian said. He understood the words just fine, he just didn’t understand why they were being applied to him.
“We don’t feel you are a good fit.”
Ten til Midnight 