Based on real events.

[Jet]

Just little short stories I write about the people I work with. Names have been changed and the stories are expanded upon to allow for some creativity.

I work at a temporary staffing agency. All walks of life come into our office, and a lot of them have really intriguing stories. A lot of interesting things also happen at our office. Writing about it is a way to share a little bit about them, and also relieve some of the stress I have... Also helps when a sad story comes and I can share it to make myself feel a little better.

Anyways, for my own amusement

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The Full Timer

He sat there, the hard seat of the chair causing numbness to run down his thigh, as each individual was called to the counter. The flannel jacket on his back covered in holes, the only shoes he had ripped and shredded after days and days of wear. Even twenty dollars would be good enough, all he needed was food.

Name after name, yet not his. No “Mark Granger”.

“Mark—” her voice cut into the air, her red hair falling in curls around her face, “Cardinal”.

A moment of hope up and gone as a clean-cut gentleman stood, wearing newer clothes all in tact. Mark looked away as his stomach sank into the floor and his throat hollowed. He just stared ahead at the movie screen, a screen he had stared at for three days now. Watching as Julianne Hough ran from her abusive ex husband, fire burning in the background.

It wasn’t until he heard the scrape of a chair against the tile floor that his eyes fluttered open.

There she was, the dispatcher Rachel, her elbow resting on the counter cradling her chin as she X’d off names in the sign in sheet. He sheepishly turned away—embarrassed, ashamed.

“Mark?” Her voice was soft as she readjusted her attention to him, probably taking in the jagged scars and homeless attire. “We need to have a discussion.”

He knew it was coming, this was no secret. After three months of working consistently at a warehouse, with the thought of a full-time job in reach, he had no showed to four shifts. And worse, he hadn’t told the agency.

The agency, a place that had set him up for work time and time again. Where the girls behind the counter; Rachel, Amanda, and Jennifer would joke with him, provide feedback, and tell him how close he was to his hours. Those four hundred hours were the only thing that stood between and a temporary employee and hire on. The agency, where even criminals, addicts, and the homeless can find a new start.

If the past doesn’t swallow them first.

“Sure,” he muttered, standing while slinging his backpack over his shoulder. Not that there was much in it other than his passport, SIN card, and a sweater.

He maneuvers around the chairs, realizing the room had emptied. A handful would have been sent for work and the rest gone home for sleep after an unsuccessful attempt at working, but only he was low enough to nap against the concrete wall in the office.

“What happened?” Her voice cut into him like a knife, her obvious disappointment lingering off every word. He could hardly bare to look at her. He knew that his no shows would have caused friction with the agency and the warehouse. After all, the warehouse was her client. She needed to appease their clients in order to continue being able to offer work.

“Nothing,” he kicked his foot lightly against the wall. A twenty-five-year-old man had never looked more like a child. “Fucked up I guess?”

She narrowed her eyes in a second of irritation, eyebrows raised with the simple response of, “pardon me?”

He knew the response was lacking, but the truth would be worse than whatever he was about to receive. She wouldn’t understand; a girl like her… Her hair done, her makeup fixed, her clothes clean washed and ironed. The jewelry wrapped around her neck and wrists only beginning to show the money she surely had in her bank account. Money he had never dreamed about.

She took silence as an answer, slamming a pen down to the counter before taking a long dragged out sigh. “You are DNR’d from Manchess,” the words hung in the air like the beginning of a snow fall.

“I figured” his voice is evidently sunken, disappointed. He knew she would hear it.

“What is going on Mark,” her voice softened more, her blue-green eyes settled on his own brown pair. His eyes dark from lack of sleep, his lips dry, his cheeks sunken.

“I got kicked out of my house on Friday. My girlfriend… She, uh… She kicked me out,” He looked away, adjusting the zipper on his flannel coat to hug his chest more tightly. He didn’t look at her, not once. “I’ve been on the streets since.”

He could see her counting the nights he would have slept on a bench, four nights total. The first night hadn’t been so bad, he had found refuge inside the LRT station where heat had been blasted. The second and third night however, he hadn’t had the best of luck. The park benches were all that he could find unoccupied, no heat or shelter. Snow had fallen both those nights, leaving him to wake up in a blanket of flakes.

The fourth night though—that fourth night had been the worst. With temperatures at a year’s lowest, he got no sleep. Not even the shelter of a pine tree could protect him from the dry cold that attacked his exposed cheek bones. From the distance he kept hearing screaming and yelling, the shelter surely bumping with starving tenants. He had considered trying to find a bed for the night there, but after seeing the lineup he knew he would never make it.
This much he did not tell her, and she did not ask. She just sat there, quietly, contemplating how to muster up a response great enough to make him feel better. Women like her always thought they could change the world…

“Do you want to have a nap on our couch?” She asked, a serious expression on her face. He felt taken aback at first; so many things she could have said, so many inspirational quotes she surely pinned off pinterest, yet nothing but an offer of a piece of furniture and a warm blanket.

It took him a moment to think, but eventually a, “sure”, was released from his mouth. She nodded her head, opening the back gate for behind the counter and leading him into a small room in the back.

For the first time in five days, he felt he could finally close his eyes. His large body hardly fit on the cushions, but at the same time it felt like the best bed he had ever laid on. Rachel retreated to the front of the office, leaving him to rest. She hadn’t said anything beyond that, no judgment or questioning.

And so, he shut his eyes.

[Jet]

Ruth Mae

She laid in bed, her cheek pressed firmly into the pillow. Nothing but a thin blanket covered her body, not even a sheet to cover the mattress. She was holed up in a small room, hardly big enough for a dog, but it was something better than what she had before.
Better than no bed at all.

Her arms were linked around the most important item she had to her name: the bible. Small enough to fit in her book bag, yet large enough to take up half her bed. All she would ever need was in that book.
Shouting continued from upstairs, no doubt her roommates had dipped into spiced rum. This was not new, this was a weekly occurrence. It had been something she grew to accept. At the end of the day—for the most part at least—she was able to avoid it completely. It didn’t usually make its way down the stairs.

The morning came quick; by the time the yelling had seized it had already been three in the morning. Only two more hours had passed with a deep slumber before a loud alarm woke her. Groggily, her legs swung over the bed to reveal age spots and pale skin, her knees bruised from the landscaping job she had done two days prior. She carefully placed her bible to her left (always her left), rising to stand and rummaging through her small drawer to find the only sweatshirt and pants she owned.

Climbing the stairs was becoming harder and harder. What used to be a walk in the park was now a dragged-out event that took her minutes of recovery at the top of the stairs. She winced as she reached the hardwood floor, straightening her back, ignoring the passed-out male on the rug in the living room. Broken glass was thrown across the kitchen with sticky liquid spots still drying on the counters.

“Ruth?” The soft whisper came from the living room where her roommate, Melinda, was waking. Ruth looked at her, not astonished by the large bruise that covered her cheek and eye. It was no surprise that their fight had gotten physical, as it does nearly every weekend. “Is it Monday?”

“Yes,” she whispered, reaching into the fridge to grab a sandwich she had made yesterday before bed.

Silence falls between them again, that awkward quiet where Ruth knows she needs to talk about what happened last night but wants nothing to do with it. How many times can a woman be beat before she finds the courage to stand?

Apparently, Melinda had grown used to the tears.

“Have a good sleep Mel,” she softly mutters before disappearing behind the wooden back door.

The bus ride is long, she hides herself at the back corner, gripping her book bag and staring at the downtown hustle. Today she had just ran a brush through her short black hair before securing it back with a brown and gold clip.

The agency comes up quickly on the bus, the little blue and black logo poking between buildings. An agency she hasn’t often gotten to, but nonetheless has gotten her work when she has. She has become desperate, frighteningly so.

With every drunk occasion comes the follow up of rent and going home Ruth is aware that Melinda will be asking for money.

It happens every Monday without fail.

Opening the door to the agency, the soft ting of a bell alarms the dispatchers of her arrival. In front of her sat what looked to be fifty men waiting to be sent out. Instantly her heart sinks, realizing the likely hood of her getting work slim to none.

Well, an hour from the dryness of the basement isn’t so bad.

“Good morning,” a female tone rings into the air louder than any male voice in the room. Behind the counter a small brunette girl hidden behind a black desk and over-sized blue laptop. She stares inquisitively, waiting for a response.

“Hi” Ruth barely musters out a word, shaking anxiously as her pen swipes across the sign in sheet.

“Looking for work today?” Her voice so much louder and obnoxious that Ruth feels herself retreating into the shadows of the corner, but she needs work.

“Mhmm,” she nods before sitting herself in a chair, resting her bag on her lap and staring ahead at the playing movie while the office begins to buzz with men coming and leaving for work.

Her foot taps shakily, anxiety flooding every inch of her body as men stand abruptly all around her. Her mind keeps shuffling between now and then, when the last time a man stood up so fast beside her, she had felt the pressure of a fist crack across her jaw. Nervously, her arms wrap around her in a self-hug.

“Ruth Mae?” Amanda calls out to come to the counter.

She sits there, gripping her biceps and nervously shaking. Forty years later and still her full name causes shocks to roll down her throat into the pit of her stomach. No one had called her by full since she ran from home at twelve.

Since her mother had laid motionless on the kitchen floor, blood running from her ear as her step father stood over with a bat in hand.

It isn’t until she is outside panting that she realizes she has ran from the office in a fit of anxiety, grasping for air and leaning as far as she can into the brick wall behind her.

“That old hag is losing it,” a teenager mutters to his friend as they pass her, exchanging laughs as she struggles to find the air to breathe.

She chokes back the tears beckoning to fall from her eyes, kneeling to the ground and tightening the grip around her arms.

“Ma’am?” A woman kneels with her, a long black parka sweeping the floor with fur gloves reaching to lightly touch her shoulder. “Are you alright?”

Ruth barely works up a nod, embarrassed, ashamed. She cannot help but be suddenly aware of the wrinkles growing on her face and the saggy skin that clings to her old bones.

“Do you need a ride home, maybe?” Her voice is soft, sounds softer than silk. Her porcelain skin is wrapped in a blonde blanket of hair with the warmest of cheeks. Ruth becomes growingly conscious of her neurotic state.

…. To be continued.