World Weary

Descent Into Madness

"Have a nice day at work, sweety!" His mother spoke at his side in the car.

Jaune grabbed his lunchbox, before doing one last check of his pockets to make sure he had all the essentials before leaving the car. His employee ID, a box cutter, gloves, and a pen. With everything accounted for, he smiled at his mother as he unbuckled his seat belt in the passenger seat of the car.

"I will, Mom. Thanks for the ride!" He shut the door behind him as he stepped out of the car into the parking lot.

He gave his mother one last wave as she drove off. Jaune fiddled with his pockets again, grabbing his Scroll to make sure he was still on time. A quick glance showed he still had a good twenty minutes to kill before needing to clock in. He approached his workplace, doing his best to delay his journey as long as he could.

The first thing he took notice of when he finally reached the entrance to Pete's Warehouse was the entrance cart corral. He was fifteen minutes from starting his eight hour closing shift. The entrance cart corral was at a whopping 0% capacity. There were no carts to be seen.

Customers blocked the entrance doors to the warehouse, waiting for carts near the corrals. Jaune saw one of his fellow employees come by with a full row of ten carts. Each individual metal cart weighed roughly sixty to seventy pounds. It was not easy to push a full ten, Jaune could attest to that. Especially with how hot the weather was. He could probably fry an egg on the windshield of any car in the lot.

The ten carts instantly disappeared, the awaiting customers nearly tripping over each other to grab one of the carts brought to the entrance. Jaune idly glanced into the parking lot to see nearly all the corrals throughout the parking lot still filled with carts. God forbid the customers just grab one of those on their way up.

Jaune moved with the flow of the crowd, entering the front of the warehouse. He idly glanced at the door to see it was Ollie checking membership cards today to get customers through the entrance fast or at least attempting to. Customers stopping right inside the entrance to dig through their wallets and purses for their membership cards brought things to a crawl.

Jaune internally wished him luck as he passed him by. He moved past the registers as he increased his pace to head to the breakroom to kill some time. Unfortunately, he passed a supervisor on the way there.

"Hey, Jaune! Can you clock early, man? We need all hands-on deck!"

'Fuck.' He internally cursed.

Jaune falsely smiled as he answered back, "Can do."

He pulled out his employee ID and headed to the time clock to clock in. After clocking in, he put his lunch in the refrigerator in the breakroom before returning to the front end of the store. He stopped in front of the front end merchandise pickup counter where all the supervisors and managers tended to gather.

Jaune tried his best to keep up the facade of being happy to be there. He was just so damn tired. He only took the job to take some of the pressure off his parents. His dad could spend more time at home and less on missions if Jaune could save up enough Lien to support his own future..

One of the supervisors approached him, "Jaune, need you out on carts. A few of the cart crew called in today. It's horrible out there."

Jaune nodded, "How many people are out there? Need me to grab anyone for rotations?"

His supervisor glanced at his Scroll, "Three out there now. Need you to tell Charlie to come in."

Jaune blinked as he tried to process what he just heard. Carts were at 0%. They had three people out there in the parking lot. One of those three out there before he arrived was Charlie. Charlie was sixty fucking years old. Why the fuck did they have him pushing carts during the rush when he could only do four to five at a time?