“The typical customer spends three and a half hours on their first trip to Orsk, and most of that time is spent up here, in the Showroom. Our focus here is aspiration, not acquisition. We want to teach customers how elegant and efficient their lives can be if they’re fully furnished with Orsk. The Bright and Shining Path encourages them to take their time and exposes them to a range of furniture possibilities. This is where we show them that although they came here for a Genofakte nesting table, it would look so much better next to a Reniflur floor lamp.”
Basil had wandered off, apparently satisfied that she wouldn’t screw up the tour. Amy walked backward on the path, and the trainees followed like a string of red-shirted ducklings.
“There are two kinds of shopper at Orsk,” she continued. “Those who buy nothing, and those who buy everything. But the serious shopping doesn’t happen until they get downstairs to the Market Floor, where they’ll encounter what we call ‘open-wallet’ areas. These are designed to put customers under maximum retail stress. The goal is to get them to open their wallets and buy something, even a light bulb, because once we crack their wallets, they will spend, on average, $97 per visit.”
They arrived in Living Rooms and Sofas, where Matt was wrestling a Brooka onto a flat cart with another partner. With Basil a safe distance away, Amy relaxed her tone, ditched her smile, and reverted to her usual sarcastic self.
“On our left we see a floor partner in his natural habitat,” she announced. “To work in Living Rooms and Sofas, you have to be capable of lifting at least fifty pounds, which means only the partners with the hottest bodies work this BA. Does anyone know what BA stands for?”
“Business area?” a trainee with braces ventured.
“And what do we do in a BA?” Amy asked.
Silence. No one ever answered this question correctly, even though it was right on the cover of the employee manual.
“We distribute joy!” Amy answered. “We share the joy of Orsk!”
Two steps closer to Matt and the stink hit Amy full in the face: the smell of sun-baked Porta-Potty, hot Dumpster juice, and rotten seafood. It hit the trainees next, and they pulled their red shirts up over their noses. The Brooka’s upholstery (Blarg, from the Classical line) was soiled with dark smears.
“I am glad we’re seeing this,” Amy told them. “One of the many benefits of working at Orsk is the opportunity to interact with customers from all different walks of life. Including the sorts of people who change dirty diapers on expensive sofas.”
“Actually,” Matt said, “it was like this when we opened.”
“Which means the closing partners left it for the opening partners to handle,” she said. “Trainees, it is a dog-eat-dog world at Orsk.”
Matt shook his head again. “I closed last night. When I left, this sofa was fine. No one knows how it happened.”
“Exactly,” Amy said. “Which is why every info post is equipped with Orsk-approved, nontoxic, hypoallergenic air freshener. Because when some lady drops her mutant baby’s drippy diaper behind a sofa, you don’t want your shop to smell like her beautiful overachiever’s butt for the rest of your shift.”
“Does that happen a lot?” one of the trainees asked.
“It never ends,” Matt said. “People don’t come here just to shop. Some of them think this is their living room, only with maid service. And you’re the maid. They act like pigs, and you have to pick up after them. Dirty diapers are just the start. Last week I had a customer chewing tobacco and spitting into a Coke can, but he kept missing and covering the floor with brown oysters.”
“And on that happy note,” Amy said, “let us proceed to Storage Solutions, one of the least pleasant shops in Orsk because no one ever brings their exact measurements.”
For the next two hours and ten minutes, Amy marched the trainees around the Showroom, from Kitchens and Dining Rooms to Bedrooms, Bathrooms, Wardrobes, and Children’s. She brought the tour to a close at the café around noon, pausing beside a wall of ten black-framed photographs of the store’s senior management, all of them giving their best team player smiles.
“We end our journey at a gallery of accomplishment that you can only dream of joining,” she said. “These men and women are the big brains behind Orsk. If you want to keep your job, I suggest you memorize their faces, learn their names, and avoid them like the plague.”
As the trainees studied the wall—some were taking Amy seriously and trying to memorize the faces—Trinity appeared behind Amy.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked.
Amy stepped back, startled. “Jesus!”
“I guess he counts as a ghost,” Trinity said. “But I meant more of the Paranormal Activity type. I think there are two kinds of people in the world: people who believe in ghosts and people who don’t. So which are you?”
Trinity was one of those happy, super-popular, high-energy girls who reminded Amy of the creatures from Gremlins: she was fun for about half an hour, then you wanted to stuff her in a blender. Supposedly her parents were super-Christian Koreans, which helped explain her rainbow-colored pigtails, her pierced tongue, the tramp-stamp on her lower back, and a full spectrum of multicolored fingernails. Despite the glam-punk look, Amy knew the nails cost $125, the hair was professionally dyed, the piercing cost a fortune, and the tattoo wasn’t cheap, either. Scratch a rebel, Amy thought, and you’ll always find a father’s credit card.
“Trainees, this is your lucky day,” Amy said, turning to the huddle of red shirts. “Trinity works in Staging and Design, which is just a stepping-stone away from working on the catalog in the Orsk USA corporate office.”
A handful of trainees perked up. The employees in Corporate had the best benefits and the best salaries. More important, they never had to deal with customers trying to game them for discounts by pointing out that Target sells a similar item, only cheaper, so couldn’t they cut another twenty percent off the price?
The trainees began quizzing Trinity. How did she know when a room was successfully staged? How long did it take her to learn the Ninety-Nine Orsk Home Staging Solutions? Was it true that desks with fake computers sold six times better than desks without fake computers?
“HR will be here in a minute,” Amy told the trainees. “They’ll help you continue on your exciting journey with Orsk.”
No one was listening to her anymore. All eyes were on Trinity.
“These are great questions!” she cheered. “But I’m only taking questions from true believers. How many of you have seen a ghost? Quick show of hands.”
Amy left Trinity to baffle the trainees and walked back to Home Office to start her floor check. Ever since the Cuyahoga store opened eleven months ago, the computers were constantly burping up inventory mismatches. As a result, all day, every day, partners had to troop out onto the floor and hand count the inventory, over and over and over again. It was the kind of repetitive labor that killed your soul.
The latest victims of the inventory crisis were the Tossur treadmill desks, the first in Orsk’s new line of exercise furniture. Amy thought they were insane. For her, the world was divided into two kinds of jobs: those where you had to stand up, and those where you could sit down. If you were standing up, you were paid hourly. If you were sitting down, you were salaried. Currently Amy’s job was standing (bad), but she knew that one day, if she was lucky, she would have a job that was sitting (good). Tossurs took that universal standing/sitting truth and perverted it. Was a treadmill desk sitting or standing? Just thinking about it made her head hurt.
She was standing at her info post, pulling the inventory checklist, when Trinity suddenly reappeared.
“Gah!” Amy yelped.
“I forgot to tell you. Basil wants to see you in the motivation room. Closed-door coaching. And you know what that means.”
Amy’s face went numb with panic. “Did he say anything else? Did he tell you why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Trinity said, grinning. “You are so fired.”
Amy crossed the café and passed through the doors leading to the back of house. At the end of a long hallway lined with HR offices, IT offices, and sales offices, she slid open the door to the motivation room. Sitting alone on a Drittsëkk cube was a middle-aged woman who looked like a country-western singer, all big blond hair and too much mascara, nervously patting a tube of Blistex against her lips.
“Ruth Anne?” Amy asked in disbelief. “You, too?”
“Well,” Ruth Anne said, trying to keep her voice under control and twisting the cap back on her lip balm. “I’m not jumping to any conclusions.”
Amy closed the door and lowered herself onto another Drittsëkk sitting cube. Ruth Anne was as committed and responsible as Amy was lazy and untrustworthy. If Basil wanted to meet with both of them, the staff cuts had to be much worse than Amy imagined.
Her brain began chasing itself in circles. If Ruth Anne was going, then she was definitely going. And if she was going, then everything was over. She’d lose her apartment. She’d have to move back into her mom’s trailer. Working retail wasn’t so bad if you got benefits and $12 an hour. But if she lost this job, she’d have no other option but mall retail, and all those jobs were minimum wage, and in Ohio that meant $7.95 an hour. She couldn’t live on $7.95 an hour; she was behind on rent as it was. And if Ruth Anne was going, she was definitely going.
Around and around her brain went.
“Did they say anything to you?” Amy asked.
“No,” Ruth Anne said. “But if we’re both here, I’m sure Basil has a very good reason.”
“We’re the first ones to go,” Amy said. “He’s firing us.”
“Let’s make sure it’s really raining before we worry about floods,” Ruth Anne said. “This could turn out to be something nice.”
That was Ruth Anne all over. She remembered birthdays, she remembered hiring-day anniversaries, she remembered children’s names, she remembered what spouses did for a living, and she talked to older partners exactly the same as to younger ones. She never patronized, she never condescended, and she never said a mean word about anybody.
She’d worked at the Youngstown store for thirteen years before transferring to Cuyahoga “just to try something new.” At forty-seven years old, she’d never married, didn’t have kids, and Amy had never heard of a serious boyfriend. She treated Orsk like her family and home, and every day she tried to make it a better place. As a cashier in checkout, she considered it her personal mission to send customers out the door with smiles on their faces. She lived to make other people happy.
“I appreciate that you’re looking on the bright side,” Amy said. “But if you’re here with me, it can’t be good news.”
“Don’t you worry,” Ruth Anne said, pressing her lips together. “We’ll just sit right here and whatever comes, we’ll get through it together.”
Then she leaned over and gave Amy a hug. Amy tried to say something, but her tear ducts felt swollen and her throat was a clenched fist. She knew that if she opened her mouth to say anything, some great big honking sob would claw its way out. She promised herself that she was not going to cry. They could take her job, but they would not take her dignity. Amy pulled back from Ruth Anne, gritted her teeth, and stared down at the carpet.
How had it come to this? For the first eighteen years of her life, she’d had one goal: get out of her mom’s trailer. When the guidance counselor had laughed at her plans to go to college, she’d cobbled together enough grants to get into Cleveland State for commercial design. But then her mom remarried, and her new husband’s income had pushed Amy into another need bracket. Without financial aid, she had to file papers as a noncontinuing student. Now she was late with her rent again, and her three roommates had made it clear that she had twenty-four hours to deliver the $600 she owed or they would throw her out.
The more Amy struggled, the faster she sank. Every month she shuffled around less and less money to cover the same number of bills. The hamster wheel kept spinning and spinning and spinning. Sometimes she wanted to let go and find out exactly how far she’d fall if she just stopped fighting. She didn’t expect life to be fair, but did it have to be so relentless?
Ruth Anne squeezed Amy’s hand and offered her a clump of Kleenex. Amy waved it away.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m not crying.”
The two women sat next to each other, stiff and silent. Amy moved from shock to bargaining, to depression, and right on through to righteous indignation, finally arriving at acceptance. Then her cycle of grief started all over again and by the time Basil slid open the door, she was back to righteous indignation. Before Basil could speak, Amy took the floor. If she was going down, she’d go out in a blaze of glory.
“I know you’ve got it in for me and that’s fine. But I cannot believe that you are firing the one decent, good person in this place.”
“What?” Basil asked, caught off guard.
“Amy, don’t—” Ruth Anne began.
“No,” Amy said. “If I’m getting fired, I’ll take it. But I want him to know that firing you is a huge mistake.” She turned to Basil. “Firing Ruth Anne is like clubbing a baby seal. It makes you evil. Everyone likes Ruth Anne.”
“Amy, listen to me,” Basil said. “Your brand connection is weak, your presentation leaves a lot to be desired, your attitude is aggressive and confrontational and not at all consistent with Core Values—”
“Don’t do it,” Amy said. “Please.”
“—but I’m not firing you,” Basil finished.
“You’re not?” Amy asked.
“You’re firing me?” Ruth Anne squeaked.
“I’m not firing either of you,” Basil said. “I’ve asked you here because I need your help. I have an extra job for tonight. A side project. And I need you to keep quiet about it.”
Relief flooded Amy’s veins like a drug. In that moment, she would have agreed to anything: climbing Mount Everest, hijacking a plane, running naked across Orsk’s ten-acre parking lot while playing the trombone. She nodded like a happy idiot, right along with Ruth Anne. But even as she did, the part of her brain that wasn’t flooded with endorphins whispered, It’s going to be something weird. It has to be something weird.
“It’s going to be a little weird,” Basil confirmed.
“How weird?” Amy asked.
Basil lowered his voice to action-movie-briefing volume. “We’ve seen a lot of crimes against the store over the past six weeks. Opening shift is finding damaged merchandise every morning. Mirrors, dishes, picture frames, curtains yanked down from the walls. A whole mattress hacked to shreds. And this morning we had … an incident. With a Brooka.”
“Incident?” Ruth Anne asked.
“It was smeared with a substance,” Basil said.
“Poop,” Amy clarified.
“A substance,” Basil repeated.
“That smelled like poop.”
“We’re eleven percent over on breakages, and Pat had to notify Regional. He’s also tasked me to lead an internal investigation.”
Pat was general manager of the entire store and Basil’s direct superior. He once delivered a baby on a Müskk, and he paid out of his own pocket for a karaoke DJ at the Christmas party. No one wanted to disappoint Pat.
“Naturally,” Basil continued, “I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“What about Loss Prevention?” Ruth Anne asked. “Don’t they have cameras?”
“Hundreds,” Basil said. “And I’ve reviewed the footage. But the lights are on a timer and at two o’clock every morning they power down to twilight mode. I’ve decided that’s when the damage must be happening. Between 2 and 7:30 a.m., when the opening shift arrives.”
“But that’s impossible,” Amy said. “No one’s ever here after eleven.”
“Apparently someone is,” Basil said.
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Ruth Anne said, chewing her lip.
“I’m proposing that the three of us work an extra shift
. Tonight, from ten to seven. We’ll wait in the break room, and once an hour we’ll do patrols of the store. The Showroom, the Market Floor, and the Self-Service Warehouse. If a vandal is sneaking in and trashing the place, we’ll bust him and call the cops. Problem solved.”
“I can’t do tonight,” Amy said. “I’ve got plans.” This wasn’t exactly true, but she didn’t relish the idea of being awake for twenty-four hours.
“It has to be tonight,” Basil said. “Regional already replied to Pat’s e-mail. They’re sending a Consultant Team first thing tomorrow morning. They’ll want a full tour of the store. And they cannot arrive to find a Brooka smeared with … you know.”
“Why us?” Amy asked.
“Because you’re both loyal and reliable partners.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “Seriously.”
Basil hesitated. “All right, I’ll be honest. I had Tommy and Gregg from Replenishment all lined up, but the Indians are playing the Sox, so they backed out. Then I asked David Potts and his brother Russell, but this morning they called in sick. So I tried Eduardo Pena, but he has to watch his grandchildren. Then I tried Tania from Café, but she’s watching an eBay auction. Now I’m asking you, because I know you’ll both say yes.”
“Really?” Amy asked. “You’re positive?”
“Ruth Anne will agree because she’s discreet, she’s responsible, and she cares about Orsk. You’ll agree because you want to go back to Youngstown. I saw your transfer request on the computer this morning. I know you don’t like this store, and I know you don’t like me. But if you work this extra shift, I’ll make sure your transfer goes through, and you won’t ever have to see me again.”
Amy’s instinct was to fire back with a wisecrack, but she was startled to realize his proposal actually sounded pretty good. “You’ll pay time and a half?”
Horrorstor: A Novel Page 2