There is goodness here. I failed to see that before but now I do. I will fight to release that goodness from its captivity. I promise. --20.2 Seconds Post-Integration.
Cut loose he was.
After their meeting in the employee-only hallway, Sandy told him to go out onto the salesfloor and to help whichever department was most in need of assistance. To do this, he knew he would need to refer to the Labor Dynamics Map constantly.
And so, he did!
Seeing that the department most in need of help was the Center Store department, he waved to Sandy and rushed out the door.
Clark managed to dodge several customers who he already knew would pepper him with questions. He made it, then, to the Center Store manager in a much timelier manner than he had been getting around before his lunch break. "Lifer Clark, reporting for duty, sir," he said in complete sincerity.
"Drop the act, kid. None of us want to be here. But we gotta do what we gotta do! So, stop your bellyaching and grab that cart over there filled with canned goods. Bring it to aisle ten and stock them on the bottom shelf, got it?" the Center Store manager said.
"I understand and will do!" Clark said, choosing against to backtalk to the man about how he was actually very interested in applying himself. He figured the manager wouldn't have known he was being sincere even if he tried to explain himself. Some people were just bitter about life and took it out on everyone they met. Heavens knew Clark had seen plenty of those people while on the road to Augustford Central.
Clark took the cart filled with canned goods and maneuvered it through the aisles. Since he was driving a cart loaded with heavy products, it was both slow, dangerous, and heavy, so he had to be cautious. If he lost control, then a customer could get hurt. If a customer got hurt, he would get hurt. Then he would get fired. Which was a kind of hurt. All in all, both kinds of hurt he wanted to avoid.
He found the tenth aisle easily. And even where the canned goods went easily, too. Although the first floor of Augustford Central was huge and had, he didn't even know, how many salesfloor Sections, each section was far from overwhelming. Aisles in every Section usually were only a few dozen meters with shelving units about eight or so feet tall. Or so it seemed to Clark's rough estimate. This gave him a good amount of space to spread out the many product cases he had to break down.
On a half-knee, Clark bent with the first product case in hand: a cardboard case filled with cans of corn.
Pull, open, remove, pull other end out... Clark muttered. He liked muttering to himself during times like these, where he had some dull, rote, thing to do. What he told himself now was the proper way to breakdown cases. Empty the cans all at once if possible. Otherwise, manually place by hand.
Over and again: pull both ends wide, push from the other end. Or was it the other way around? It didn't really matter, he knew. As long as the job got done in a timely manner, any way was the good way. He unloaded about two dozen case of product in about an hour. [You've Gained Experience!]
His cart empty, he returned to the Center Store manager to see what help he should render next.
"Back already? What a kid. More over there. Don't get slouchy, now," the manager said, vaguely indicating a whole line of shopping carts filled with product.
Clark took at random a cart and asked which aisle he should take it. "That? Thirteen."
Like before, Clark carefully maneuvered the heavy product-laden trolly. He moved slowly through the salesfloor. As he did, a man wearing a bright, yellow fishing vest asked him where their 'hooks and bait' were; the System processed the request, then directed Clark to say, "Aisle Zero, sir. Head down from the meat row. Just past the restrooms."
"Thank you, young man. Have a pleasant day," the sir said back to him.
[You've Gained Experience!]
[Exceptional Application of Niceness!]
That last notification took him for a loop. The System did not often give him notifications in the form of feedback. Nice to know it's watching. Like a god. Or a highly productive security guard.
Though customers continued to throttle against one another like ocean waves, Clark found it to be pleasant sailing on calm seas: luck, the nature of the crowd? He did not know why, but the customers now seemed tamer. He fielded answers to several questions as he made his crawl.
In aisle thirteen, he found where the product needed to go. It was an instant product meal. Noodles with something else. Clark was not sure what as he had never eaten these kinds of packaged meals before. Seeing its cousins on the shelves, he was about to place the case next to the product already on the shelf when, from his behind, came a sharp voice. "Nope!
Not realizing the voice was meant for him, Clark continued to place the product and even removed the thin plastic coating.
"Hey! I'm talking to you!" the same voice said.
Turning to see who it was, it was someone he did not recognize. The nametag said, Robert.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"Sorry, Robert. I didn't know you were talking to me. What can I do for you?" Clark said, diplomatically, haplessly stiff.
"Ugh. Well, ya are not doing it right. Look at the product number on the case. Here, see?" Robert said, indicating where the number was to be found. "Look at the final five digits. Whichever shelf-tag matches is where that product goes. Where you just placed it is where another product goes!"
Clark confirmed what Robert told him and apologized. He quickly righted his wrong by flipping the two product places.
"Does that work for every product, regardless of department?" Clark asked, realizing a chance to get information when he saw it.
"I don't think it works for every product, but you can find some variation of it in just about every product. Specialty products are done differently, I know. It's a good thing to know. Work smart, not hard," Robert said with a wink.
"I will do both, because, why not?" Clark replied with a smile.
"As long as it gets done, I don't care," Robert said before returning to their own work.
[You've Earned Experience!]
[Exceptional Application of Honor!]
More feedback? He took a moment and wondered if the System awarded extra experience points for putting on his game face. If it did, it isn't like he would ever know, but still. It would be nice to know if it did.
The new tip from Robert helped his productivity immensely. Before, he relied upon scanning the shelves, locating where an item belonged through a visual search matching it to others of its ilk. Efficiency-wise, searching by the final five digits dramatically cut the time he spent searching for each item's location. He lowered himself right close to the item's tag and sifted through the final five digits on every tag.
He ended up unpacking an additional three carts.
[You've Earned Experience!]
It blared again. Still no level up.
Clark worked harder yet. He cleared another cart choked full of product.
"Good grind... uh, Mark, was it?" the Center Store manager said.
"It's 'Clark,' sir," he replied to an unconcerned manager.
With another cart in hand, and sweat making his skin sleek, Clark told himself he had to cool his pace. He couldn't push himself the entire time he worked. Unless he wanted an early grave from stress and muscular over-exertion. Stopping a moment to rest as a customer with a lengthy train of her customers-in-training behind them, he took a glance at the Labor Dynamics Map. The 'Needs Help' list no longer showed Center Store as the department most in need of aid but rather the Produce department.
On a whim, Clark reversed himself and went to the Center Store manager saying he had to go and help the Produce department.
The manager did not like that idea and told him, "Once you've made a commitment to a department, you can't un-make a commitment. Finish that cart, then you can go, son," the manager said without even a flicker of concern in his eyes.
Grumbling to himself, curses only came to mind when he tried to apply meaning to the manager's disregard. Nothing he could do. He followed through on the manager's demand. He did gripe to himself the entire time, though, uttering things like, 'fecking darn bricks-for-brains,' and 'if I was in charge, I would have the fine sense to let a worker do their actual job! What if I had been Climbing and needed to do whatever-it-was that a Climber would need to do in such a situation!' He finished his work then dodged out of the department with a wave to the manager after he returned the cart.
[You've Earned Experience!] the System told him. Level up, now? He hoped.
Nothing.
Oh well. To work!
With a few gallops of his still hard-laboring legs, he made his way to the Produce department. He found the manager or sub-manager from one of the other days and launched right into asking what help they needed.
"You're s sight for sore eyes," the manager said. His nametag read 'Ditch.' "You can start by taking the crates from outback and filling the gaps in the display with fresh shipment. Any crates directly behind that door just take and stack on one of those silver delivery carts. There. Any questions?"
The labor was slow. Produce was something he had never done before. Aside from the day two tour he had done. Or did that happen on day three? He wasn't sure. Though he only had been at Augustford for not even a week, his sense of time already felt as though it had blended with the long hours in the salesfloor to transform his perception into a disorienting temporal smoothie.
[You've Earned Experience!]
[You've Earned Experience!]
Blue melons, bananas of every shape and size, cut fruit and whole fruit platters, vegetables, most of which he had never seen before. He stocked it all. Then when his silver cart ran out of product to place, he returned to the back to grab more product.
[You've Earned Experience!]
Yeah, I know I've 'earned experience,' what about a level up?
Nothing, of course. He pulled another cart and followed Ditch's directions for setting up a produce container. He then gently filled the container with melons of every shape and size. He placed the price tag on them, six Standard Credits per melon, and -- ignoring the experience indicator -- stole a glance at the LDM: the needs of the Produce department were met. He re-doubled himself so as to give his weight to the Mapped goal.
"Hey, kid! I need you to cut this up for me, snip-snip!" a nasty woman wearing a strange see-through dress said.
Avoiding any part of her body which the dress might accidentally allow him to see, he indirectly met her eye contact and said, "That fruit? Sure. I will take it out back to cut and return soon. If you could just give me the melon, please, ma'am?"
"No. Not this melon. Get one of the melons from over there!" the woman said. "I have business with this melon."
"Of course, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am!" he said, scurrying off, grabbing a melon, and heading outback.
Biting back a retort to the woman after he passed the shopper-employee boundary line, he went straight to an open product cutting outlet in one of the side rooms to the main back. Dozens of workers packed the back, making Clark's progress much slower than he would have liked. Hopefully, he would not be pinged for slowness when he couldn't control the pace of those around him. He grabbed a free stall and placed the melon on the cutting board.
"Crap. How did she want her fruit cut?" he asked himself. He thought back to what she had said but there wasn't anything he recalled about the interaction which could tell him more about how she wanted it cut. He considered, briefly, returning to the salesfloor to ask her, but with her attitude, he decided against it. "I'll just cut it into slices."
Following the directions on the poster on the wall in front of him, Clark cut the melon according to the graph's demands and soon had before him a line of well-cut fruit silvers. There were directions for chunks as well but not knowing what was more common to the customers here, he settled on the silvers then returned to the woman, happy he could accomplish a task he had never done before so quickly.
"Here you go, ma'am," he said and handed her, her product.
"Silvers?! I SPECIFICALLY asked for CUBES! I guess that is just too hard for you simple folk, eh?" she said sarcastically, sauntering off with her cart.
Confused not for the first time and certainty not for the last, he was about to inform Ditch he would be needed in another department soon when an alarm went off. Good gods, what is it now?!
How Do You De-stress from Work?
