Hardly Working

Hardly Working

I got to work a couple minutes late. There was a huge accident on the highway and traffic was backed up for miles. Or at least that’s what I was going to tell the manager. I hopped out of my car and walked as fast as I could up to the building. The automatic doors slid out of the way as I sped into the supermarket and nearly ran into a group of my coworkers. None of them noticed.

“What are you guys doing?”

Finally one of them turned and acknowledged me, a bagger named Charlie.

“Oh hey Dave... “

He turned back to gawk with the rest of the crowd of employees, all of them seemingly in a daze, fixated on something deeper in the store. I moved to the side so I could peer over the crowd and past the grocery displays to see what had everyone’s attention.

“What the-”

A weird black monolith was gliding up and down aisles, silently restocking the shelves. Mechanical arms emerged from the ominous machine and filled the shelves with box after box of Cheerios and Lucky Charms with an unnerving speed and precision. It worked its way down the aisle, dragging a pallet full of groceries behind it.

After a couple minutes of watching the robot in silence, one of the cashiers, Margaret- we called her Marge- turned to me.

“Management just introduced it this morning. They say it’s supposed to help with our store efficiency. I think it’s all a bunch of hooey! I bet it’s spying on us.”

Marge was the oldest, and according to her, the wisest employee at our store. A few years ago she was in hot water with the higher ups for getting into a fight with the breakroom microwave. She said it was “giving her funny looks”.

“Damn machines…” she muttered under her breath.

“Alright folks, back to work! We’re on company time here!”

Our manager, Martin, walked up and started shooing us back to our posts.

~ ~ ~

After a week or two we had become more accustomed to the new “employee”. Every day it would motor up and down the aisles, filling the shelves. Sometimes when there weren’t many customers, a couple of us would follow it around to see if it did anything weird. None of us trusted it, but at least it was doing some of our jobs for us. The only employee here that enjoyed having this thing around was Martin. At our mandatory meetings every week he would go on forever about how the robot was boosting our efficiency and making the company more money. He failed to mention how customers were too creeped out to go down the aisle it was restocking, or how babies cried when it passed them.

~ ~ ~

I was standing near the pharmacy counter, talking to the pharmacist and a couple of the other employees. It was a pretty slow day, a Tuesday afternoon or something, not many customers.

“Do you guys know what happened to Jerry? He’s been missing his shifts, do you think he’s dead?”

Charlie always made up crazy stories whenever somebody was out for a day or two. Apparently, when I was out with the flu, he started telling the rest of the store that I had run away to join the circus. The pharmacist was the first to stop shaking his head and address Charlie’s question.

“Jerry probably just had a little too much to drink this weekend and hasn’t left the floor of his bathroom. It’s not like this hasn’t hap— what the hell is that thing doing?”

We all turned to look, expecting to see our robotic friend piling up cans of soup or something. But instead, it was moving away from the aisles of groceries, heading towards us.

“What’s it doing? Why is it coming over here?”

We fell silent as it drew closer. I was the nearest to it, and as it approached I could hear the hum of its motors pushing it in our direction. It stopped a foot or two away from me, paused for a second, and then spoke to us.

“WORKING HARD OR HARDLY WORKING— AM I RIGHT. HA. HA. HA.”

And then it turned around and went back to its job while we stood there, eyes wide.

“What— what the— what?”

~ ~ ~

There were four of them now, patrolling through the store, filling up shelves, approaching us and trying to tell the same joke. They’d started talking to customers too, offering to help them. It seemed like the customers had started warming up to the robots and Martin took every opportunity he could to point that out to us. He had also given them name tags, as if they were real employees. Speaking of that, we were losing some of our “real employees”. Charlie was gone, and Susan from the deli. We all assumed Jerry was gone because we still hadn’t seen him. Fired or dead from alcohol poisoning, we weren’t sure. Either way, we were starting to lose our majority to the robots.

Apparently this was happening other places too, not just our store. The newspaper stands next to the sliding doors were full of headlines about all the jobs being taken over by robots. The police, firefighters, bus drivers, even bartenders, all being replaced by machines. That last one I found out myself after work. I thought I would be able to forget my troubles for a while, but it’s hard to escape a problem when it’s staring you right in the face.

~ ~ ~

I was exhausted after a long day at work and glad to finally be home. I walked in the door, ready to relax and recover. I looked around my apartment, wondering if my girlfriend had gotten back from work yet. I saw some of her clothes scattered on the floor, which is strange because she’s usually the one telling me to pick up after myself. Then I heard a noise from the bedroom.

“Sarah, is that you?”

I quietly walked to the bedroom door and cracked it open. My girlfriend gasped loudly and rolled over onto her back, covering herself with the sheets. Next to her was—

“What the FUCK?!”

“OH HI DAVE. SORRY YOU HAD TO FIND OUT THIS WAY. WORKING HARD OR HARDLY WORKING— AM I RIGHT. HA. HA. WAKE UP DAVE. WAKE UP.”

I woke up to a mechanical arm prodding me over and over. I had fallen asleep at the cash register.

“SLEEPING DURING COMPANY TIME DAVE? SHAME ON YOU.”

The robot rolled away while I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. It passed Martin, who patted it on the back before looking at me and shaking his head. He tapped his watch and mouthed the words “company time”.

~ ~ ~

There were more robots than ever working in the store. I couldn’t even tell how many, they were all swirling around through the aisles. I was one of the last three humans working at the store. Management thought we were too inefficient, the robots were better, faster, and cheaper than us. When Marge was let go she made sure to let us know that she saw this coming.

“I knew it from day one! None of you ever listen to me but I’m always right! These damn machines are gonna take over the damn world!”

None of us responded because we were starting to believe her.

A few days after that I got called into Martin’s office. This wasn’t too irregular, he liked to occasionally threaten our jobs to get us to work harder.

“Oh, Dave, what a pleasant surprise. Please, sit down.”

He gestured to the cheap chair on the opposite side of his desk.

“You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you in today, aren’t you?”

“Wait,” I feigned a surprised face, “am I the employee of the month? I’ve dreamed of this day for years!”

Martin’s smile was almost fake enough to hide the annoyance stewing underneath.

“I’m afraid not. One of the other employees came to me with some disturbing news. Apparently last Thursday they spotted you leaving your post, while on the clock, and traveling to the break room. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“My phone was almost dead so I went to plug it in. I really don’t see what the big deal-”

“The big deal? Dave, this is company time we’re talking about. Company time! Couldn’t you have waited until your break?”

When he said the word “break,” I thought he was going to vomit. Martin could never understand the idea of not working constantly. Working must be easier when your job is just to praise a bunch of machines.

“Wait, how did you even know that? Nobody was around, who told you?”

“One of our most loyal employees, Chad.”

“Chad? The robot? Those things are spying on us now?”

It turns out Marge was right the whole time. Martin let me off with a warning, saying that he felt “sympathetic” today. As I left his office, I passed “Chad” the robot.

“HEY DAVE. WORKING HARD OR HARDLY-”

“Shut up Chad.”

~ ~ ~

One day I was walking in to work when I saw someone hiding in the parking lot bushes.

“Hey, what are you doing- Jerry? Is that you?”

He spun around and pressed his finger to his lips.

“Shh! You’re gonna blow my cover, man! Quick, get down here before they see us talking!”

I crouched down next to him.

“Jerry… where have you been? Are those branches taped to your hat? What are you- are those binoculars?”

He peered through his binoculars, studying the front of the store.

“I think we’re safe, they haven’t noticed us. I can explain everything, but first I need to know you’re on my side. These robots- they gotta go. I’ve been studying them and today’s the day we finally fight back. Are you in?”

He reached his hand out to me, I thought about it for a second before grabbing it.

“I’m in.”

~ ~ ~

I was kind of impressed with Jerry’s plan. I didn’t know where he got the blueprints to the store or a child actor to pretend to be his son, but I don’t think I want to know. Anyway, the plan was simple, or so he said. Jerry and his “son” would enter the store in disguise and pretend to be regular customers. After they checked out, one of the robots would offer to bring the cart to their car, which was perfectly positioned to avoid being seen by the security cameras. This is where Jerry’s plan started to be less impressive. Once the robot was behind the car, Jerry would bash it over the head and throw it into his trunk before speeding off to a “secret location”. He would then attempt to reverse-engineer the thing and try to figure out how it worked, and more specifically how to make it stop working.

After my briefing I finally entered the store and was immediately greeted by “David”.

“LATE AGAIN DAVE? MAYBE IF YOU UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE, YOU’LL RUN FASTER. HA. HA.”

Their jokes are getting worse.

I went through the day as normal, and eventually saw Jerry enter the store with a really fake-looking beard and a kid that looked nothing like him.

“Oh God…” I muttered.

Somehow he made it through the store without drawing too much attention to himself. When he finished filling his cart with groceries, he entered one of the checkout lanes manned by a robot. I watched in disbelief as it scanned all the items and proceeded to push Jerry’s cart out to his car. The plan was working somehow. Once they got to the car and opened the trunk, Jerry suddenly grabbed the robot and threw it into the trunk before running to the driver’s seat and driving off.

~ ~ ~

A few days later I was at work and hadn’t heard anything from Jerry in awhile. I wondered if he actually got to his secret location and figured out how to deal with the robots. I was minding my own business when “David” approached me.

“I KNOW WHAT YOU DID DAVE.”

“What are you talking about? What did I do?”

“I SAW EVERYTHING DAVE. YOU CAN’T HIDE ANYTHING FROM US.”

Just then, Martin walked in the sliding doors, flanked by two police robots. He pointed at me and they arrested me. “David” had seen me talking to Jerry and recognized him through the disguise. He told Martin, who contacted the police. They found Jerry and the robot he kidnapped in Jerry’s garage.

The robots had fully taken over. I didn’t spot a single human police officer during the whole process. Martin was the last human employee at the store now, at least until he got replaced. I was sitting in the police station holding cell when a guard motored over to me.

“WORKING HARD OR HARDLY WORKING- AM I RIGHT. HA HA.”