break down

I’m a temp at this place called Ogness Dexum. Weird name. Not sure of the significance. Was recently assigned here through my staffing agency. $11/hour, a few days of work. Must be good for office morale to bring in an absolute subordinate with a master’s. Raises the collective staff sense of self-worth or something I bet. 

Ogness Dexum makes these machines in China that automate the discovery of new elements. Well, it’s called “discovery” by the Ogness Dexum marketing material (pushed on the public through “sponsored journalism”… gag me). I, of course, know better. Their new elements are “discovered” only in the same sense that Columbus “discovered” America. It’s state-sponsored colonization all the way down, violently creating new frontiers, just swapping people for protons. God himself had the good sense to stop at Uranium: give us a little taste of nuclear fission to show us why not to go any further down the table, but of course we can’t help but fill empty spaces. 

They keep the machines in this warehouse and run them in the basement. Maybe they’re gonna finally hit the island of stability down there. Maybe they’re gonna create a new supermassive element to radioactively salt the earth in Iran for 10 ^10 years or some shit. They need my services to assemble and ship little welcome gifts for their new clients. 

Not even sure who the fuck could be considered a “client” of a place like this. The ‘gift’ is a box full of Ogness Dexum emblazoned merch: a mug, a water bottle, a pen, and a letter which essentially says “thanks for your business,” in the corporate-speak that takes four pages to say four words. Maybe the clients will think the sentiment is sincere if the message is long.

They brought in four temps when they fell behind on boxes. They set us up in a little cordoned-off section of the warehouse. We built the boxes, then packed ’em with the mug, water bottle, pen, folder, letter, and packing peanuts, then put the box inside a cardboard shipping box, then loaded those on pallets. A bunch of them are shipping to Virginia, I guess. 9-5, $88 pre-tax. 

Now I’m driving to the warehouse for day two.

I walk into the warehouse at 8:54 am. By 9:00 there’s still no sign of the supervisor, nor of two of the three other temps from yesterday. Looks like it’s just me and this boy named Amory today. He looked about mid-twenties, but a baby-faced mid-twenties, y’know. Blonde messy hair, medium length. Generally aloof disposition, but not in a mean way, just in a casually distant way. Wearing tight black joggers and a black hoodie, both look like that stretchy dry-fit material. Tight little ass and a tall slender frame. He says he was an assistant coach for a college soccer team before this. Must not have been very good at it, he looks like he’s barely old enough to be out of college, much less an authority figure at one. This is his second temp job through the agency. I would fuck him, but he’s probably got a girlfriend, or he doesn’t take dick even when he’s single. Or maybe he got fired for deepthroating the players in the locker room… Frustrated after a loss, grabbing hold of that shaggy hair, staring into his icy blue eyes, putting that mouth to use…

I look up at the clock. Hasn’t even been 10 minutes. It’s always funny how people are desperate to work as many hours as possible during the week, begging the manager to bump them up from 20 hours to 30, 30 to 40, needing a fat direct deposit next week, only to inevitably be denied, but then on the individual workday, they’re equally as desperate to get home ASAP, incessantly checking the clock, praying to leave early… The different time frames must be qualitatively different rather than just different chunks of a linear timeline, I figure. There must exist some duration of time over which you could bargain someone into committing every waking moment, and in the other direction, some length of time you could never make them give up. Maybe someone will make virtually any commitment for the next 40 years, but they will defend to the grave their right to do what they want this weekend. Something like that.

9:12- supervisor shows up. Name’s Michelle. Looks to be 50s, but a rich person’s 50s. No wrinkles, no marks. Short gray pixie cut, carefully kept off her face, carefully parted to her left. Thick-rimmed black glasses. Wearing a plain all-black outfit, but business black, not goth black. It all seems intentional.

She says she’s sorry, but yesterday, “the decision was made in a marketing meeting to alter some language on the first page of the letter we’re sending to new clients…” Basically we’re going to take the first page from each letter in the boxes from yesterday and replace it with a new version with some words switched around. “It’ll be another 9-5,” she says. $88 pre-tax. She briskly leaves for a meeting.

Her second-in-command is bringing the pallets of boxes from yesterday back to the temp area with a forklift. Second in command is called Kaitlyn. Or Caitlin, Caetlynn… some permutation of letters yielding those first & second syllables, since I haven’t seen her spell it out, and since moms of Kaitlynnes always think they’re too special for it, the name is breaking into a million pieces. Black wavy hair almost to the middle of her back. Wearing an oversized purple fleece sweatshirt and tight blue jeans. Not sure of her actual job title, but she wields whatever authority the position gives her with almost apologetic sincerity.

I’ve only been here for one day, but I’ve seen these ravenous warehouse boys flirt with her at least 10 times, over once/hour, just from my blinkered POV in the temp area. She’s got the pear shape these guys will line up for, because it’s not gonna intimidate them, or make ’em question themselves or what they’re doing, but it’s still got all the curves in the spots where you want to put your hands. Tight jeans help, framing her wide hips, hugging her asscheeks… I would, if I didn’t have to climb over the clamoring warehouse masses…

Time for us to start. Replace the page in the letter, and re-close the boxes. So, I begin. I take the box cutter. I cut open the shipping box. I remove the welcome box nested inside. I open the welcome box. I remove the first page of the letter. Of course, I want to compare it to the replacement page… I’m curious.

Hello!

Welcome to the Ogness Dexum Automated Solutions family! We’re excited…

Blah blah blah…

Boring…

My eyes glaze over. I only notice the change upon closer inspection. Second paragraph, second sentence. On the original: “as of September 12, our facility is directly responsible for servicing your Ogness Dexum machines.” Then, on the replacement, “our facility is directly responsibility for servicing and repairing your Ogness Dexum machines.” I show Kaitlin the difference and she lets out a polite work laugh. “I guess marketing wants the clients to forget how long it took to send their welcome present.” We make eye contact for a second.

I think it’s funny how it’s a pre-req to be a huge dipshit if you wanna get into marketing. I mean, look at this fucking waste of time and energy. I would be the smartest marketing guy in every meeting, making me wholly unsuited for the job. I couldn’t relate to the oh-so-key dipshit demo. 

Even more important, I’m not blessed with the marketers’ deft touch of stupid, with which they inject the warehouses of the world with just a drop of inefficiency, yielding banter and levity with untold benefits to society (and also, another 8 hours of work, $88, for me this week). Threading that needle, generating a net positive from the strategic insertion of drawbacks, requires the unique finesse of a genuine dipshit, and I think I would be too heavy handed. As I see it, such contradictions must be a key cog in the System, else they would’ve just been automated out years ago, and that without the dipshits mucking everything up we’d probably be ruined. Caitlynn walks away.

Next, I show Amory the change. This is our task for the day, huh? Talk about inefficient. We’re literally undoing the work we did yesterday and redoing it. He laughs. I think about slipping in the word ‘kafkaesque,’ but he either won’t get what it means or, even worse, won’t get that I say it ironically. He thinks it’s funny a company that makes complex automation machines still just brought in human laborers to do their menial monotonous repetitive tasks. I also think that’s funny. 

Then we go back to unstacking, opening, switching pages, re-closing, and re-stacking that which we opened, closed, and stacked yesterday. Again: box cutter. Cut, spin, cut. Long cut across the top. Open. Remove welcome box from shipping box. Open welcome box. Remove the first page of the letter. I take the replacement page and try to slide it into the folder with the rest of the letter. 

Sliding this plasticky corporate paper against another piece of paper is fucking infuriating. At first, I thought I could just line up the page in the folder’s pocket and release it, letting gravity slide the paper down in front of the other papers. But no. It’s stuck halfway down, so I take my hand and try to slide the paper down. But it gets stuck again. Then the paper starts to crease, so I can’t just force it in. This page is not budging. I don’t get it, there’s nothing there for it to be stuck on. It doesn’t even seem like the page fits in the folder pocket. Friction? I don’t know.

I get the page lined up as close as I can and just close the box. My moment of surrender to the mysterious powers of friction is also a bit of a rebellion. Some customer of Ogness Dexum is going to have the first page of their ceremonial welcome letter slightly askew in their ceremonial welcome box. Maybe one of the corners even got folded down when I closed the box… I laugh to myself: what am I, a fuckin’ terrorist? Unfortunately, these ceremonial aspects are the only part of the Process I can influence enough to even stage this pathetic insurrection.

Cut. 

Spin.

Cut. 

Cut down the top. 

Open shipping box. 

Remove welcome box. 

Open welcome box. 

Try to slide a paper into a folder where it doesn’t fit.

I get distracted.

I pick the box cutter back up. Funny how this little thing can have such an effect. I place the blade on my right ring finger directly below the base of the nail. I feel it… might as well, huh? Really stick it to these fucks. Wait, who? Who cares. I press down hard and twist the blade. It fucking hurts, no surprise. Shock wears off: what’d I get? Just a little chunk of skin and a bit of the nail.

There’s blood but nobody sees it yet. Not “a lot of blood” necessarily, but enough blood to be out of place on the warehouse floor. I love it. Nothing temporary about that stain. I want to get rid of some more. I place the blade against my wrist. Hold on, what am I, a fucking teenager? Embarrassing. Luckily, nobody saw that. Instead, I line it up with the center of my right thigh, stab and rip out as hard as I can, opening a sizable wound, maybe three or four inches across, carving out a thin finger of flesh. 

Now, this could be called a “lot of blood.” That’ll show ’em. Maybe they’ll even have to shut It All down for a few days to clean up. Caitlynne sees. Maybe she’ll be stuck in some therapist’s office describing me next week. She shouts, “oh my God! Are you ok!?” What a funny thing to say there. I’m just gonna keep on with what I’m doing, rather than answer that stupid question, or go over and stab her or some other fuckin’ saccharine gesture. Why bother, I just checked and it’s only 16 minutes till I clock out anyway.