„Phase two, step one, engage.”
Olu wouldn’t mind Samaria’s voice to be a tad softer.
He’s all in favour of lady bosses, because diligence, resilience, morale, and whatever else got praised in last years stupid gender awareness training session.
In Olu’s school days, gender blindness was all the rage. Only as far as curriculumdom was concerned, obviously. Being past reproductive age, the teachers had little trouble pretending to believe there was no difference between the Adams and the Eves. Their charges, Olu’s teenage self included, begged to disagree, always fervently and sometimes physically. Olu knew exactly whom he wanted to get laid with, and gender blindness made about as little sense to him as wasting valuable games time on homework
A little more than a decade on, science has caught up with Olu’s intuition. Unfortunately, it has also declared the ladies especially apt at management. Studies have been conducted. The gender awareness instructor, a lady, of course, had them track through a landscape of 3D graphs. On talent after talent, the guys were hills next to the ladies mountains. The ratio was only reverted for physical strength, and the ability to tolerate blood alcohol levels. Very important features, but unfortunately not from a business perspective.
A little less volume, and a little more melody, that’s nice to have, in a voice.
Olu selects the phase two icon on his screen.
He’s left handed and of course wears his control glove on that hand, anything else would feel weird. He fondly recalls how his late boss Kevin, who was right handed, switched glove sides when he arrived, to make sure his instruction would proceed as smoothly as it did. A nice gesture, from a superior, to welcome a new teammate.
Having completed the demanded action, Olu confirms:
“Phase two, step one, engaged.”
And Samaria to snap back, much faster and more robustly than necessary:
“Phase two, step two, engage!”
Olu resents. This is not the fire brigade, they’re not about to perform news type heroics. There’s no life-or-death countdown, no nuke ticking in the basement.
They’re on board an Arctic surfer, harvesting vintage ice, one thousand cubic meters at a time. If they drop one of these gigantic ice cubes, and go on to miss their quota, nothing happens. If they vanished now, some filthy rich snobs would have to make do with good old desal for drinking and oral hygiene, like everybody else. Olu is no union man, but a catastrophe this isn’t, that much he knows.
Olu would love to tell Samaria to stop fuzzing.
He won’t, because in this shithole of a workplace every single word uttered is being recorded. Someone might listen in right now, ‘for quality purposes’, as in surveillance. Quality of workforce life is not the target management is going for, obviously.
Samaria would resent being criticized in public, and take revenge. By means of the shift schedule, obviously. Tougher blokes than Olu have been turned into weeping wrecks by one harvesting season of split standby shifts. You have to keep yourself available 20/7 to take over in a maximum of five minutes, and get paid a third of a minumum wage for a maximum of ten hours per day for the standby time. Stress plus financial ruin. Terrifying.
The higher ups can watch, too.
Most of the time, it’s an artificial intelligence scanning the video feed for early signs of upcoming trouble. It’s sure to have noticed how hard Olu has been staring at this screen, for the last two days. Never would an AI miss signs of anger. Unlike Samaria.
If only the bitch was a little more like Kevin. He would have noticed at once, when Olu stopped smiling. Never would Kevin have dared not to ask, about issues. And he was always ready to remedy, never hesitating to choose his own discomfort.
With Samaria, Olu is exhausting his grump muscles to no effect.
Poor Kevin. He was so stressed by his minority status, always on the lookout for any signs of anyone resenting his presence, always ready to apologize. A bit tedious, his very Caucasian servility, but still nice to have around.
Mostly nice. There can be too much of a good thing.
Olu recalls how Kevin’s apologies for fetching the wrong protein bar from the canteen culminated in a mea culpa for colonial crimes. Yes, there’s a lot of history, behind something as simple as a coconut flavor, and it’s full of white-on-black crimes. But you don’t want to hear about the more gory aspects of slavery while eating.
Kevin never tired of telling anyone he met, about how sorry he felt, for all the misdeeds Caucasians committed, until well into the 21st century. He was most upset about them having enjoyed centuries of undeserved privileges, and forever grateful for his fine job.
“Being allowed to harvest ice, instead of slaving away in often deadly flood or fire combat, such luck, no idea how I got here,” Kevin used to say, slipping on his own slime.
Kevin’s presumed luck turned out the be deadly after all.
Olu was glad never to have added to Kevin’s pressure, unlike some of the colleagues. Otherwise, that fatal heart attack could have felt like his fault. A full Karoshi death, right here, on the chair bloody Samaria is squatting now. Less gruesome than a fire fighter death, but still pretty bad, as far as the result concerned. Death by apology. Unlike some people.
Olu hopes the monitoring AI can’t read his mind too well. He’s thinking a combination of Samaria and a fire fighter accident he saw on TV, and he’s well aware that’s not the kind of thought one is supposed to harbor, in a team context.
“Phase two, step two, engage, now!”
Samaria’s voice is so over the top, painful to listen to. Despite the discomfort, Olu struggles to refrain from grinning. Adding even one word, that’s against protocol. The bitch is at fault now. No need to look up from his screen to know her head will be in process of going steam cooker. When she’s angry, her eyes bulge forward, like ready to plop out.
Taking care to add a little pause after every word, Olu goes:
“Phase two, step two, engaged.”
He’s sticking to protocol, come what may. Takes more than a nuisance of a shrill boss to impress him. Samaria dared not grant him a switch of shifts. He won’t be watching the Dota 5 Champions League final this year. A never no way. Ever since he played his first game, he never missed any major encounter, never mind a Champions League final.
A crime to beat all crimes has been committed, and Samaria will pay for it.