The Warehouse Tour

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By Monday, someone had cleaned the whiteboard outside Colm's office. The box marked unresolved had disappeared. Nathan remembered Imran writing in it three times because the first two pens had run dry.

In its place was a notice welcoming an important visitor.

"They've spelled your name right," Rosa said. "So there's progress."

Nathan had asked to return without a tour. He arrived to find a tour assembled anyway. Colm stood beside a regional manager Nathan had seen twice in eighteen months, both times from a distance. A row of high-visibility jackets waited on reception hooks. His own had been removed from the locker where he left it.

"We thought something fresh," Colm said.

The new jacket was the same size. Nathan wished he could object to a more useful difference.

He had arranged authorized leave from his ordinary duties while the personal meetings continued. That was not the same as ceasing to be employed by Linden, though people kept congratulating him on escaping. Tomas waited by reception. Nathan had asked him not to follow the warehouse visit as though colleagues he had worked beside last week had become a crowd requiring control.

The regional manager described the center's performance. Orders, accuracy, service, a graph whose upward movement apparently explained everything. Nathan recognized the figures from notices employees had been expected to celebrate. He had never seen them accompanied by food until today.

"Could I look at the late queue?" he asked.

Colm answered too quickly.

"We've dealt with that."

"Since Tuesday?"

"There's been a concerted effort."

Nathan could see people working beyond the glass. Imran was in the same aisle, moving more carefully than the visit required. Leah Dunn looked toward the office, then back at the order in her hand. Nobody appeared to be experiencing the concerted effort as a completed event.

Rosa asked whether the manager could show how the late queue had changed, rather than describe how it ought to feel. He agreed with the air of someone accepting an unusually demanding educational request.

They followed the route marked for visitors. Nathan had walked it during his first induction. He noticed the corner where somebody had turned a stack so the damaged faces looked toward the wall. It might have been for safety. It might have been for appearance. Before last week, he would have known whom to ask without bringing two managers into the conversation.

Imran greeted him.

"How's the retirement?"

"Busy."

"Nobody warns you."

They both smiled, and for a moment the new jacket stopped mattering. Then Colm explained that Imran had been invited to say a few words about the team's flexibility.

Imran looked at Rosa.

"Was I?"

The regional manager said there had been a misunderstanding. Nathan had expected to enjoy embarrassing Colm. Watching Imran wait to discover what had been volunteered in his name was less enjoyable than the imagined version.

"Please don't make people give me testimonials," Nathan said.

"Of course not," the manager replied. "We're simply proud of the team."

Rosa asked whether they could keep walking. Imran had work to finish, and nobody had arranged time for him to be interviewed.

At the end of the aisle, Leah was checking a message. She put her phone away when Colm approached. Nathan remembered her lending him a charger during a long late shift. She had then spent ten minutes searching for her own cable while apologizing for needing it back.

"Everything all right?" he asked.

"Fine."

The word closed between them.

Nathan tried to find a question that could reopen it without asking her to contradict a supervisor in front of management. He could not. Rosa said she would speak to Leah later if Leah wanted, through their normal arrangements. Nathan kept moving.

It felt like failing a test he had not known was being set.

Beyond the loading doors, an order stood wrapped and labeled in the holding area. Nathan recognized a mark on the outer carton. He had helped move it away from a leaking container on Thursday before taking leave for the introduction. It should have gone by Friday.

The dispatch sheet attached to it said closed.

"Has that left?"

Colm said it was awaiting collection. There had been a change to the carrier allocation, an issue outside the team's control.

"But it's in the completed numbers?"

"Packing is complete."

The regional manager added that different measures described different parts of the process. Nathan knew that. He had also spent eighteen months hearing the completed figure described as though it meant a customer's problem had ended.

A woman in a blue inspection coat came from the returns area. Colm introduced Inez Salas, quality. Nathan had seen her disputing a returned-part classification last winter. She had eventually won. The part had waited another day while the dispute traveled through the right inboxes.

"Closed doesn't mean departed," Inez said. "It depends which record you're reading."

"Then why does the board report call it dispatch performance?"

"You'd need to ask whoever combines the records."

She did not say the parcel proved a false report. Nathan appreciated the limit even while wanting a revelation larger than one stationary carton.

He took out his phone, then stopped.

"May I photograph the label for the order reference? Not the people."

Inez asked him to wait while the appropriate staff confirmed what could be shared. He put the phone away again. He could remember how annoying it was to be told a practical request needed another person. He was beginning to understand how much more annoying that request became when people could no longer safely refuse it.

They agreed that the order reference and relevant process records would be provided through a proper review. No photograph of a colleague appeared in Nathan's camera roll.

Near the office, the regional manager tried to recover the visit with a question about Nathan's priorities. Training? Welfare? Perhaps an employee recognition fund?

"Could we start with what Rosa's been asking for?"

"We've always maintained an open dialogue."

Rosa opened her notebook.

The manager looked briefly unhappy about the existence of dates.

She described a request for clearer shift notice and protected paid time to gather concerns. Leah's problem, she explained without offering Leah's private circumstances, was not that nobody had made a kind speech about flexibility. Workers could be told they were needed, arrange their lives around the hours, and then discover the hours were provisional in a way their own costs were not.

The manager said demand varied.

"It does," Rosa replied. "Your demand isn't the only thing that varies when you change a shift."

Nathan wanted to say he would fix it. The words felt ready and generous. He looked at the jacket, the arranged route, the people who would still be here after his car left.

"I'd like the request and the actual response put in front of the people responsible," he said. "Not another summary saying we've had a dialogue."

Rosa did not thank him. She asked who those people would be and when they would respond. Nathan had to admit he did not yet know.

Afterward, he found his old jacket folded inside his locker. Nobody had thrown it away. The relief was absurdly strong.

He asked Rosa about Leah. Rosa said Leah had agreed to talk to her, not to him, and she would not pass on the conversation without permission.

"I'm not trying to use it."

"You don't have to mean to."

He took his ordinary jacket off the shelf. It smelled faintly of the warehouse despite the weekend inside the locker. He folded it into his bag instead of wearing it for the departing photograph someone had apparently arranged.

At reception, Tomas asked whether he was ready. Nathan said he needed a minute and went back far enough to find Imran during an authorized break.

He did not ask for testimony. He asked about the printer.

"Still hates the north," Imran said. "Everything for the northern depot comes out crooked."

Nathan laughed. Imran asked whether they were still going to watch the match on Saturday. Nathan had forgotten their arrangement, then felt furious at himself for how quickly he had allowed forgetting to seem inevitable.

"If you'll have me."

"Bring the food you promised. Inheritance hasn't canceled it."

Nathan said he would. This was the first appointment anyone had made with him since Tuesday that did not require him to become somebody else before arriving.

There would be no photograph. He had already discovered that much about the visit he wanted.