They emerged as snares without rhythm from the back of my throat. They were a reliable presence as I bent over to put a reel of transistors back into a shelf, until they became looming phantoms that materialised regardless of how straight my back was. Heads did not turn until the tenth or the eleventh, but bodies shifted in seats ever so slightly from the first, like an instinct not yet identified.
In my mind I wanted someone to send me a home, but I didn’t dare to ask of it for myself. Nobody did. The two aunties I work with told me, first passively and later firmly, to drink water, and for a moment I despised them for not being more frightened. My supervisor checked my temperature, which was a comfortable 36.6 degrees, and said that I might want to visit the doctor after work.
Working has made me think in ways I never thought I would. I started thinking that a visit to the clinic would cost at least 50 bucks, which was a day’s worth of work, and with the 5-day medical certificate that now accompanied every visit it would cost me much more. So I didn’t go to the doctor. I took some medicine and drank lots of water and slept it off and woke up the next morning at 5:30 AM.
From that day, one of the aunties would remind me to fill up my bottle every morning when the water cooler was unlocked. The devastation and anger I felt when I faced a padlock over a tap wavers between revolution and resignation, but always remains as an undercurrent of wordless frustration in a corner of my mind. Alas, the corporate machine never fails to find surprising crevices in which to tie its leash.
Most of what I do is meaningless, I know. But ticks on an Excel sheet, these deliberately incremental markers of progress, fool me into thinking it isn’t. This day I was tasked with finding a reel of capacitors that had been misplaced, that I knew would not be there. I resented the immediate absurdity of the task, but I eventually resigned myself to it. I took Camus’ advice and imagined Sisyphus happy. For, at the very least, there was an honesty to this absurdity.
As I flicked through shelves and shelves of reels with part numbers ranging from the hundred thousands to the millions, I sang David Bowie songs to myself at a low volume, humming through the passages I had not memorised. I kneeled down to sift through lower shelves, whistling the the lead guitar on Always Crashing in the Same Car. I stood on a stool to run my eyes across higher shelves, the reel I was in pursuit of a Starman, waiting in the sky! It was truly a God-awful small affair.
The next day a few superiors came down to identify this mutiny and conversed with my supervisor in harsh tones about the missing reel. He pointed at the aunties and I but never looked at us, and uttered these words: “他们死掉了。” They’re dead.
I stared at that superior with the eyes of a dead mackerel, but he didn’t do so much as glance at me once. Apparently each capacitor in that reel was worth two bucks, and there were a thousand capacitors in that reel. The entirety of the salary promised by my contract would not be able to cover that cost, and I knew it was not an amount the aunties could easily give up.
Marking down the part numbers of reels that had returned from a factory line, I sat dumbfounded before a certain reel, whose part number I could not find all throughout this three-page picking sheet. I searched forwards and backwards, running my pen and my eyes down every six or seven digit number. I gave in and told one of the aunties that this part simply was not on the list. One look at its label and she jumped up and shouted “找到了！” We’ve found it!
She reiterated a variation of the phrase “I told you so” to every co-worker in the immediate area, directing deliberate derision to our supervisor. No, that missing two-thousand dollar reel was not on us. A factory line had asked for it without needing it and we had given it, and the blame went to the bottom, to us.
But eventually that celebration receded before the endless sea that is our work. That reel was just one of thousands we picked out and put back and marked down everyday. I knew better than to expect an apology from the superior that casually threatened our lives over this wavelet of a misunderstanding.
The simple truth is that I do not like doing the same thing over and over again. I have thought of resigning too many times to count. Every time I found myself standing before the door to Human Resources, guilt and self-loathing came to the rescue. Quitting requires me to give a one-week notice, and before I knew it I had just one week left.
I say guilt and self-loathing, in the sense that doing this job has made me realise how damn privileged I am. Many are resigned to doing the same thing over and over again until their Metamorphosis, upon which another family member takes the role of breadwinner, or another portion of the household income is lost. If I can’t do this job for just one month, what am I except a lesser version of the entitled wealthy classmates I have envied and despised all my life? I needed to know that, if ever my fate has me walking in the snow, I can work a job like this again without any qualms.
Upon learning that I had one week left, one of the aunties got sentimental. She said these exact words:
“小弟，你一定要努力学习。你不要像我们没有学习一样，每天辛苦做工。” Little brother, you must study hard. You don’t want to be like us who didn’t, who have to work so excruciatingly hard everyday.
Its advice I’ve heard from a hundred adult lips. But it sounds a little different when uttered with regret.
On my last day I counted parts, ticked off part numbers on a picking sheet, sought out parts according to a list and returned parts back to a shelf. When I was writing down labels for a shelf one of the aunties told me to write with good handwriting. “我们看这些字就会想你。” We will remember you by these words.
One of the aunties told me a series of well-wishing idioms I did not understand, but I still felt like crying through my awkward “谢谢”. I said my last, rather formal “再见” to the other auntie.
Soon this month will be little more than an inkblot on my memory. Soon I will move forwards and far, far away from this job, while the aunties keep picking parts in this danger room. Soon I will forget their faces and they will forget mine.
I remember their names, but only a fragment of each one. Yu Yue and Hua Jie. I never learnt the characters.
