Four Minutes and a Settings Menu
Three weeks. That's how long I've been watching my phone drain to forty percent by noon and telling myself I'd look into it later. Simone fixed it in the break room before I'd eve…
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14 entries tagged #breakroom.
The Machine Voice
End of shift. Jackets retrieved, one schedule-printout argument narrowly avoided, the kind of tired where you sit down in the break room just to confirm you still can. Simone put…
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What Fall Does
Mid-September and Simone's aunt has called three times since Tuesday. I know this because Simone told me during our overlap break today, and I know it landed on me the way it did…
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Twelve Minutes
September eleventh. The shift ended at a quarter past five and neither of us moved immediately. That is the thing about the break room at the end of a long one, it holds you for a…
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The Machine Had Other Plans
June twenty-third. The vending machine dispensed the wrong thing. I want to state that plainly before I explain anything else, because the sequence of events only makes sense if y…
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The Dollar and the Stare
March fifth. The vending machine in the break room took Simone's dollar on Tuesday and gave her absolutely nothing in return. Not a jam. Not an error message. Just silence and the…
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The Note Was Not That Funny
November sixth. By the end of the shift we were both running on the particular kind of tired where everything costs slightly more than you have, the kind where you measure out you…
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The Notes Page Was Optimistic
July eighth. The break room has a south-facing window that does this thing in the middle of the day where the light lands exactly on the table surface and makes everything look mo…
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We Had a System
June twenty-seventh. The plan was solid. I want to be clear about that. We had a notebook. We had coffee. Simone had divided the material into sections with the kind of brisk effi…
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The Autocorrect Situation
August twenty-second. Simone got a new phone last week. I know this because she has mentioned it approximately zero times, which is how Simone announces things, they appear, compl…
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The Lanyard Goes in the Bag
July twenty-fourth. The shift ended at eight and I stood in the break room for about forty-five seconds doing the specific nothing that happens right after a long day, lanyard sti…
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After the Call
February sixteenth. Simone called her dad from the break room. I know because I was already there when she walked in, and she said, quietly, already dialing, "I'm just going to ca…
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Two Minutes in the Breakroom
January twenty-fifth. There was a flyer on the corkboard. There are always flyers on the corkboard, the corkboard is a municipal landfill for notices about potlucks and shift-swap…
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The Mirror Gives No Notes
December third. There are exactly twelve minutes between when Simone and I both arrive and when the floor actually opens, and we have somehow filled all twelve of them, every shif…
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