All Dolled Up!

Charlie

"Ah, so you must be Charlie," a man said as he greeted me just as I walked into the warehouse.

I had thankfully woken up just as my alarm went off and managed to get here in time. The warehouse was about a half-hour's drive from the house, the upper limit of how long I could tolerate in a commute. There was nothing extraordinary about it from the outside, it looked like a huge ugly slab of concrete, but that was to be expected. And anyway, I was relieved to be somewhere where exciting things weren't happening for once.

The man who had greeted me was wearing a bright yellow vest- one I recognized as part of the employee uniform. And I saw his name on his nametag, leaving no doubt as to the fact that this was Dylan. He was a bit younger than his voice had conveyed over the phone - was he possibly a smoker? His short brown hair and light acne almost made him look like a teenager, though his eyes betrayed his age. I guessed he might've been only a few years younger than me.

"Ah, nice to meet you, Mr. Sofos," I said.

"Just call me Dylan, man," he said and gave my shoulder a light slap. "Again, thanks so much for coming on such short notice. How are you liking Pine Grove?"

"It's okay," I said, shrugging. "I like the feel I'm getting."

"Right, well, I would like to introduce you to everyone, but let's get to your orientation first," he said.

He took me aside to a room for employees and ran me through the basic rules of the warehouse. Wear your vest at all times, no gossiping while on the floors, keep your ID card on you at all times, etc.

"There's a bit more things that you need to do, like Corporate Compliance and uh, I think a meeting with HR before you join, but well, ah, you can get that done by the end of next week," he said. "Night shift is kind of cool, most of the work is right around now at shift change, when there's a bunch of unloading and stocking, and it gets busy again when it's almost morning when stuff needs to be cleaned and the next shipment comes in- in-between though there's a lot of free time with not too many issues unless something comes up," He was clearly trying to sell me on the perks of night shift for a reason, probably because it was hard to retain night shift workers.

"Alright," I said.

"Here, let me just sign you off to one of the night managers," Dylan said as he led me out back to the back of the store where there were two trucks parked. "Here's Stuart, hey Stuart! Wanna give the new guy a 'hello!'"

The first thing that I noticed about Stuart when he got closer were his yellow nails and the discoloration of his teeth as he flashed me a toothy grin - while I wasn't fully sure about Dylan, this guy was a smoker for sure. "Well hey, the name's Stuart. How're you feeling on your first day? Or night I guess?"

"It's good," I said in a flat voice. He seemed slightly less... for lack of a better word, organized and professional than Dylan did. His vest was not tucked in right, he was wearing sandals though if I remembered correctly the dress code prohibited that, and his shirt was stained from whatever sandwich he had been eating recently.

"Alright then, well, Stuart will take over from here," Dylan said. He handed Stuart a set of keys before waving me off. Right, Stuart was the day shift manager. It was a bit unfortunate - I would've likely preferred Dylan to Stuart, but hey, it was all probably still going to be alright.

"Alright, so we've gotta work on unloading these things," Stuart said. "'Course it won't just be us, Matt should be coming 'round soon once he's finished dealing with the inventory check."

We exchanged some basic pleasantries - I learned that Stuart was twenty-six, and had just welcomed home a new daughter, whose pictures I could tell he was dying to show me.

I had no kids of my own, but I knew what to do in these situations - I nodded and smiled where appropriate and based on his reactions I think I passed his expectations. As I shook his hand I could smell the tobacco surrounding him so I had been right about him being a smoker.

The next two hours passed in relative silence as we worked on unloading the boxes. I wasn't too unused to heavy lifting, and in a way I found this period of work to be far more enjoyable than what followed. I could throw myself into the work and not have to be bothered too much by idle chatter, and that was great.

Because idle chatter was exactly what followed after the unloading was done.

There were very few actual issues to take care of at this time, and the corporate policy against talking to coworkers while on duty was ignored (as honestly in my opinion it should've been) much like many other policies I had been told of recently. Stuart was chill with it, which was very understandable as he was the one making the most violations out of all of us.

Talk of course immediately turned to me - that was to be expected, I was the 'new guy' here after all. Given that the usual topics of conversation must've been exhausted many months ago given this was a small and unexciting town, that would be the only thing that'd interest them.

I honestly wanted nothing to do with them - not because they were bad folk, but because I just wanted some more time to myself. One of the reasons that I had grown to dislike the day shift was because of the constant bickering and politicking that went on at that time. I didn't want to be dragged into another such environment, which is why I had chosen this kind of place to begin with. Not to mention I wasn't even technically supposed to be here for a few days.

However, though it wasn't what I wanted, I went ahead and approached them. I was the new guy, and I was going to be working here for at least a few months. The best thing to do was to walk up, make some small talk and introduce myself, and then if I wanted to I could go sit in the corner somewhere later.

I learned that lesson as a nurse. Even if I had a patient who had died, or who was sobbing after being delivered their cancer diagnosis, I needed to be chirpy as I spoke to the next person or their family. People might always ask, 'How're things going?' when you met them, but this was just a lie- they were never interested in how you were really doing. There was only one socially acceptable answer to this, of course, and that was 'I'm fine.' It was a mistake to let your actual feelings out when it came to a professional sitting, and your coworkers were not your friends. Of course, you did not want to provoke anyone or make enemies with them by being too reserved, you had to keep things pleasant, but that was it. Otherwise, focus on doing your job and collecting a paycheck. All lessons I had learned time and time again.

"Hey everyone- name's Charles Padwick, but just call me Charlie," I said and raised my hand while cracking a wide (but not unnaturally wide) smile and putting as much enthusiasm into my voice as I could muster.

"So where'd you work before you came here?"

"Where are you living?"

"You like Pine Grove?"

The questions came all at once.

"Uh, so yeah- I'm liking it here okay. I was working in New York before this, so I guess it's a nice change of scenery for a start. A lot quieter. I uh, well, this is my first time working in a place like this. I was working as a nurse before..." I trailed off as that was the best introduction that I could give, realizing it was kind of pathetic, but hey- this wasn't exactly a formal interview.

This was met with a few confused gazes.

"Why'd you quit then?" Stuart asked. "I mean you must've been makin' two- heck, maybe three or four times what you'd be making here."

"I know, my friend's cousin is a travel nurse and she was making bank, but that was during the pandemic," Matt said. "Still heard it pays good though."

"Well, four times is a huge exaggeration, but yeah... I ended up taking a pay cut... coming here" I said. "Uh, thing is that I... well, the job got a bit too much and I just... didn't want to go ahead with dealing with all the things it involved. I guess I kind of needed a break..."

"But think about all that wasted time and money in getting your degree," George (at least I think that was what his name was) said. He had a head of gray hair, and as far as I remembered what I had been told about him, he had retired some time ago, though his wife had passed away three years ago and he remained as a worker just so that he would have someone to talk to. His children had all moved away and rarely visited him - it was quite depressing to think that working in a place like this was the best social environment he could aspire to. "All of it gone to waste." He shook his head.

Well, it was not so much in a manner as to insult me as he was just saying this in general. At least I hoped it was the latter. And at least it wasn't like he was going on a tirade about how 'kids these days quit too easily.'

"I don't know if I've left it for good..." I said. It was a lie, but I felt I had to salvage something after I had been told all of that. And in a way, if I twisted my own thoughts, it was 'sort of' true. There was always a chance that I would go through something huge that would change my life in a way that I would return to my old profession, so it was technically not entirely false. "Just that I'm taking a break."

George nodded emphatically - so I guess he wasn't thinking that I was some entitled millennial who had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.

I was bracing myself for further questions, but no one seemed to want to pry further into my earlier job. I suppose they all had their assumptions regarding exactly what had caused me to quit, but likely didn't want to ask any more.

George turned out to be quite a useful source of information - he still did some work around his household so he was able to give me some estimates on how much work and how much money it would cost to repair the old house. He even offered to drop by one day on the weekend and lend a hand if I needed it, which I politely declined but said that I appreciated the gesture.

At least, he was helpful in the beginning, but he began to frown the more I asked questions. "Kid... I gotta ask, are you trying to repair a house, or build one from the ground up?"

I chuckled. "I uh... it's a bit of a fixer-upper. And it is kind of big."

"Huh," George said.

The conversation was interrupted by a voice over the intercom. 'Cleanup on aisle four.'

After that, the 'gang' so to speak split up and we went our own separate ways. It was a quarter to midnight at this point, and for the next three hours, nothing much of substance happened. I saw George sleeping in a chair, I saw Stuart and Matt smoking outside, and I even saw some other people had brought a console and were playing some kind of fighting game in the break room.

Then, it was four A.M. and the first of the morning trucks came, and the place came to life yet again and we were kept busy until shift change in the morning.

"So how was last night?" Dylan asked as he saw me getting ready to leave.

"It was ah... pretty good," I said.

"Great, see you later," he said.

"Well, nice seeing you all!" I said as I walked off.

I got home, feeling exhausted, likely because I had not yet adjusted fully to night shift and hadn't gotten the required amount of sleep before heading off to work that night. Whatever, I would adjust. Eventually.

I crashed onto my mattress, falling asleep almost instantly.