Unknown Forces Pt. 1

Untitled Part 1

 It's 7am. The alarm goes off like it has the past four mornings. Zane lethargically reaches over and fumbles around with the alarm clock until he can push the off button. He lays there for a few seconds before he throws off the blankets and swings his legs over and sits on the side of the bed.

The past couple weeks have been rough. He's tried his best to fit in with the rest of the people at his new job, but he's noticed that when everyone goes on break, he usually ends up by himself. He can see every once and while that some of the workers huddle together, look at him and laugh and point fingers. But if he tries to go and strike up a conversation with them, they act like nothing's going on. While he struggles with that, he also tries to focus on doing the job as best he can. The company is called MedTech. They manufacture and ship medical devices and supplies ranging from walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, to pill containers, bandages, and gauze wraps. It's a busy, constantly moving atmosphere where the demand for good performance is strictly upheld. Even though it sounds difficult, Zane feels like he's been performing well and is getting used to the daily routine. Which is more than he can say for the past few jobs he's had.

He went through two different Temp Agencies with his past two jobs and neither of them ended up working out. The first one was your typical 9-5 office job. Once he was there for just a few days, he found himself totally and completely overwhelmed by the massive workload and walked out on his lunch break without saying a word and never came back. A few days later he went through another Temp Agency and found a job working as a telemarketer. He only lasted a few hours doing this and found out that there was no way he could handle a job where he had to deal with frustrated and irate customers on the phone. Not to mention that there was a quota that each individual team member had to meet as well, which added further pressure to the job. He tried to stay there for as long as he could, but like the last job, he left without a word on his lunch break and never came back.

While he was searching for the job that he now has, he knew that office and customer service-centered jobs weren't his thing. So, he thought he would give manufacturing, production and manual labor would be better. Sitting there stranded at a desk, staring at a computer screen, and answering phone calls for eight and a half hours a day was more than he could take. Office politics and gossip were also never things that Zane wanted to be a part of. He came in, tried to stick to doing his job and made sure not to deviate from it as much as he could. He wasn't much of a social butterfly, which didn't bode well in an office environment. He found himself being the butt of jokes from several co-workers and when members of his team would want to leave the office to go out for lunch, they stopped asking him if he wanted to join them. Most days for lunch, Zane would be either be left sitting in his cubicle eating quietly by himself, or he would go to the small lunchroom and eat his lunch at a table by himself.

But, by the time he got the job at MedTech, he was used to being a loner. He had adopted the persona in the workplace but had inadvertently let it leak out from there and take over his life outside of work as well. When he got off work, he would go straight home to his 1-bedroom apartment. His neighbors hardly ever saw him outside during the summer, or springtime. The only interactions they had that they even considered frequent were when they saw him go out to his mailbox to get his mail. Even then, the communication was minimal. The only plus being that he's been at MedTech for about 5 months now. The temp-agency was getting relatively decent reviews on his performance and MedTech decided to hire him on as a full-time employee. However, once they did that, his performance changed.

Since today was Friday, Zane knew that once he got there and finished his 8-hour workday, he could leave knowing that he had the entire weekend to himself, to do whatever he wanted.

He gets up off the bed and heads into the bathroom and splashes some water on his face in the sink to help himself wake up. He ended up staying up later than he had initially intended the night before. As the water runs off his face and falls onto the floor like droplets of liquid titanium, he looks at himself in the mirror and yawns widely. The weekend is his only motivation as he heads into the kitchen and starts brewing a pot of coffee so, he can put it into his travel mug once it's done. He already has his clothes set out to wear from the night before on the back of his computer table next to his bed. As the satisfying smell of freshly brewing coffee starts wafting around his apartment however, he's already dressed and comes out to the kitchen once again and pours the brew into his travel mug to take to work. He opens his refrigerator and grabs a Rubbermaid container of leftover spaghetti from dinner last night and closes the door. He picks up his coffee and heads out the door.