Dolores P., by BrevityThing
Dolores P. Ramirez was hungry. Her stomach had been gurgling for over an hour now, and it was only eleven. She knew that when it gurgled it always sounded louder to her than to anyone else, but even so. Seven more hours until the shift ended. Seven more hours until she could get something filling to eat. Seven more hours to sit here, gurgling.
Sure, she had stuff she could nibble on. Pumpkin seeds. Jerold J Martinsen over in cubicle B11 had recommended them. And yep, they were okay for something to mindlessly graze on, but there was no…no heft to them.
Dolores took a handful of the seeds out from the paper bag anyway, and filtered them into her mouth. The time in the bottom right hand corner of the computer’s desktop hadn’t changed since she last checked. Must have been less than a minute ago.
Dolores started typing again. Her eyes moved from the papers on the stand at the left hand side of her monitor, then to the screen, then down to her fingers over the keyboard. She wasn’t quite a touch-typist, but she was getting close. One thing this job was good for, it was good for your typing speed.
She typed the words, the same words she always typed, hardly making a mistake. Not that mistakes were a problem. In fact, they were encouraged to a certain degree. Mistakes are the human touch. They’d been taught that during one of the half-yearly company refresher training courses that Dolores got paid extra to stay over the following mornings to attend.
Another one finished, Dolores rotated her head on her neck. She could hear little creaks and feel little twinges in her neck more and more these days. She kneaded her hands together and stretched, from shoulders to her ring-less fingers.
Doing this kind of thing, eight hours a night, five nights a week couldn’t be good for you. Neck, wrists, back problems, posture, carpal tunnel, repetitive strain, muscle pulls, you name it. Sure, the company kept on a therapist to give advice, but she only worked days. There was a health and safety officer, but all she seemed to do was come around every three months or so, ask you to tidy your desk and not hang your coat on the back of your chair, not to eat while working but to have regular breaks. Then they’d replace the “How To Sit At A Desk” poster that hung at the end of each aisle with the latest version, featuring another, slightly more modish cartoon character than the previous. At the moment it was the Family Guy man, whatever his name was.
She typed another one and sent it. Then another. Then almost one more before there was a whoop from two cubicles over. A hand came up, punching the air. That was Ernest T Martins in C09. Damn, he was good. He was the floor’s sales champion, not just the shift champion. Had been since Dolores started here, a year previous. He had the magic touch, a way of tweaking and massaging the sales message just so, the way that seemed to get a customer response two, three times more often than anyone else. Bonuses, that’s where the money is. Not on the piecework rate they got as basic. Not on the piecework rate that kept you at your desk for the full eight hours, hungry or not.
Thought of that piecework rate sent Dolores back to her keyboard. She started to type, fast.
There was something up with her mouth. Her tongue explored then flicked it. A bit of pumpkin seed was lodged between two teeth. It wouldn’t budge. She kept flicking it, enjoying the distraction from the click and tap of keys on the keyboard, and the occasional springier sound of the space bar between words. Her gut gurgled again, but even that seemed to step into the same tap-flick groove she’d established.
A ping. She got a ping.
Incoming. Wow.
Dolores clicked a tab onscreen, opening another page, scanned the contents of the fresh email fast, and let out a yell.
Others looked up over their partitions and scouted around to see who was shouting. Dolores was out of her seat by now, doing her usual sales victory shimmy.
“Go girl!”
“Dolores!”
She sat back down. There was a shadow over her shoulder, darkening the glare from the monitor. She looked up to see Miss - Mizz - Sanders, the floor runner. All short hair and sharp suit, even on the night shift.
“Good one, Dolores.” Mizz Sanders’ eyes were fixed on the screen.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“And good one earlier, Ernest.” A hand waved back over a partition in acknowledgement.
Mizz Sanders clapped her hands for attention twice before she spoke again, louder, to the floor. “We’re having a good night, team! Keep these sales up and we’ll beat the morning and the afternoon shifts again. You’ll see your rewards in your payslips!”
Dolores watched as Mizz Sanders went over to the whiteboard at the far end of the room and changed the shift sales figures. Not even midnight, and the numbers were good. If they kept this up, they’d cream the previous afternoon and morning shift totals. And a few more scores like this one for Dolores, and she’d be looking at a very good month indeed.
Hell, if she kept this up, she’d be up there with people like Ernest, and maybe there’d be promotion. Maybe to another floor, to another department like jewellery, real estate, or stocks and shares. Maybe to floor runner. Somewhere away from here.
But then again, medicines were okay, and there was some money to be made. Sure, sometimes you got freaky emails back, and the work wasn’t for everyone, what with so much of it getting deleted without ever being read, or being sent to email addresses that either never existed or simply weren’t maintained any longer. But there were, Dolores knew, men out there who couldn’t get it up, or who were ashamed of their tiny penises. Men who for whatever reason wouldn’t go to their doctor. Menwho needed the kind of medications that she could offer to supply, and who could afford to pay the premium for her services. Men who needed her.
But they could wait five minutes.
Dolores P Ramirez got up out of her seat and went over towards the snack machine near the water cooler. She deserved a little something sweet.