chapter 1

“You must be Kay!” Tom exclaimed as his new coworker gingerly walked over.

“That’s me! And you’re Tom, right?” Tom nodded and showed Kay their working area.

“So how much do you know about things so far?” he asked.

“Food and drink supplier and we’re processing orders, right?”

“Yup! We just make sure quality is good, monitor tickets and manage overstock, what goes in the compost or gets chucked out, all that good stuff.” Tom said, excited to finally have someone to talk to after weeks alone at work.

“Apparently I’m also taking the job of another team member who’s on temporary leave” Kay explained.

“I wasn’t aware of that…” Tom remarked. “That’s a lot of work, even for two people!”

“Yeah, pretty long hours, but the pay is good compensation and I can deal with some long days until they’re back off” she explained.

“Well you’ve got free meals” Tom giggled looking over at the mound of bulk food packaging in need of processing at the end of the conveyor belt from within the warehouse.

“Wait, we can eat that stuff?” Kay asked.

“Yup!” Tom answered. “I should probably show you around.” He walked over to the conveyer. “This is all the stuff that’s past the sell by date or hasn’t been picked up, we just assign it to either be composted or disposed of…” Tom pulled open the top of a large box, ripped some packaging and pulled a donut out which he handed to Kay. “...Or eaten by us”

Kay, who’d not eaten breakfast from first-day-at-the-job nerves, gratefully took the donut and began eating it as Tom moved towards the desk near the right of the conveyor belt.

“This is where I am usually, and this one” he moved up one space “is where you’ll be working”.

Kay sat down in her fancy office chair. It was very large and her petite figure took up almost no space on its expanse. She pulled up the armrests and rotated them inwards to meet her arms.

“Yeah the chairs here are pretty big” Tom acknowledged “but at least they’re comfortable”

Kay pulled a lever on the bottom of the chair and the backrest flew into her back, pushing her forwards. Tom pulled it back again and they both giggled. “Seems it’ll take some getting used to” she quipped.

Tom gave Kay a tour of the rest of their corner of the warehouse before showing her how to use the management system and getting back to work.

The two of them began catching up on the backlog of work in silence, only broken every hour or so by Tom taking food from the conveyor for them both. Kay was ravenous having worked through her lunch break, but too embarrassed to ask for more. She was relieved when Tom began packing his things to go home. “Don’t work too late, Kay”

“It’s okay, they’re paying me for the hours!” she smiled.

As soon as Tom left, Kay went over to the mound of food and found some pastries and a plastic cup into which she poured herself a smoothie from the tap on one of the large liquids containers Tom had shown her.

“Mhmm” she breathed, tucking into her dinner whilst tapping out a few orders on her workstation.