Chapter Text
It was 3AM when Lena would awake to the shrill beeping of the digital alarm clock on her nightstand. She groaned, scooting over to slam the button and turn on the lamp that sat next to it. Warm yellow light stung her eyes as it illuminated a relatively neatly kept room, save for the pile of laundry in the corner she hadn’t had time to fold yet. Being the produce team lead was no easy task; just yesterday she’d been at the store from 8am-9pm, covering for two call outs that made up nearly the entire closing team, and today she’d been scheduled for the opening 4-1 shift. Groggily, she lifted her aching body out of bed and wandered to her laundry pile, passing by the mirror to see her worn frame, topped with her royal blue hair turned wild by sleep.
‘You’d think after breaking down all those pallets of apples I’d be giving Sid a run for his money,’ she thought as she shifted through the clothes.
If you had asked her a year ago what her opinion of Sid Arkale was, she would most likely laugh and tell you that he was loud, brash, and obnoxious. He had barely become the stocking team lead when Lena was hired to the store as a stocking associate, but he usually worked the afternoon shifts, meaning Lena didn’t see him until right around the time she was clocking out. She perceived him to be overly outgoing and carefree, reminding her of the obnoxious jocks she had grown apathetic towards in her high school years. She often saw him joking around and picking on his associates, going off to help other departments or chat up other workers; habits that were, in the grand scheme of things, completely harmless, but she couldn’t help feeling a bitterness toward him for it. Something about a manager being extroverted was strangely more jarring than one that was a total buzzkill and stickler for the rules.
One morning she came in for her morning shift to find Sid there much earlier than expected, standing before an open freezer chock full of pallets of frozen food items that had been left untouched by the overnight stocking team. Without turning around, he sighed and said plainly, “Welcome to hell, kid.”
It was just Lena and Sid for the next 4 hours. The other two associates scheduled had called out and the next worker to come in wouldn’t get there until almost noon, so left with 7 pallets stuffing the entire freezer full, the team lead and his associate could only do the best they could.
“Hey, is anyone around to give me and my associate a hand with these pallets back here in the freezer?” Sid called over his walkie, only to be met with a deafening silence, “I guess that’s a no… well, looks like it’s just you and me. Go grab a pallet jack.”
Lena nodded, rolling her eyes as soon as she turned around. ‘Already barking, of course. I wonder what the afternoon team really thinks of him.’
Four hours in, the two had barely made it through two pallets, dodging in and out of customers asking for help and printing use by labels for a seemingly ridiculous amount of Walmart-branded items. ‘Shouldn’t this have been done at the stupid factory?’ Lena wondered to herself, grumbling as she fiddled with her work phone, waiting for the program to finish processing and printing the stickers, “and shouldn’t these things be faster? It’s 2022, for fuck’s sake-’. Suddenly her thoughts were interrupted when a voice, just too shrill to be Sid’s sounded from behind her, “What are you doing?”
Nearly jumping out of her skin, she whipped around to see a man with spiky, red hair, sporting a name badge that read: GILL: STORE LEAD
“I-I’m just waiting for this t-to print use-by labels,” Lena stuttered swallowing a lump in her throat.
“You do know the next truck is here, right? Why are you not helping unload it?”
Her stomach dropped; the next delivery truck for frozen items had arrived, and her and Sid had barely made enough room in the freezer to fit two pallets.
“Oh, uh, I’m sorry- it’s just… there’s not a whole lot of room in the freezer so m-me and Sid are- “
“Well how many pallets have you finished so far?”
Lena hung her head in anticipation of whatever rage Gill was about to unleash on her, “…Two.”
“Jesus Christ…” Gill pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes tight, “we have a truck waiting to be unloaded, an entire OGP team that needs to be able to pick these items, and all the customers coming in who also need to buy them. Really? The best you can do in four hours is two pallets? Not to mention you have price changes and pinpoints that still need to be done!”
“I-I’m sorry, sir,” Lena felt like a sinkhole had opened in her chest, fight or flight senses swallowing her up. Tears were starting to sting the corners of her eyes, and she bit down on her lip hard to stop them. She opened her mouth to attempt to form a response, but was suddenly interrupted,
“Gill, lay off her,” like an angel in her darkest hour, Lena turned to see Sid standing a few feet away with his arms crossed, “We had two callouts today and once again, Stoica and his overnight team didn’t do jack shit. We’re doing the best we can.”
“Well I’m sorry to say the ‘best you can’ isn’t good enough. Do you realize how many tasks your team is behind on right now? Do you know how far behind that puts the rest of the store? Our metrics and our sales are now behind because of this!”
Lena could see a fire greater than that of Gill’s burning behind Sid’s green eyes, but regardless, his response was a strained, but level-toned, “I’ll stay late. I’ll get it figured out.”
“You’d better have that truck unloaded and all those pallets broken down before you leave. If it takes you working overtime then so be it, but it needs to get done today.” With that, Gill turned and strode off speedily, leaving Sid and Lena in his wake. Lena turned to Sid first, observing the anger and exhaustion behind his expression, before he turned to her and said, “Why don’t we take a fifteen?”
The air outside was cool and the sun was in the early steps of its journey west. The new associate and her team lead were sat quiet against a wall on the outside of the building. Sid pulled out a box of cigarettes and a lighter, taking a cigarette out of the box and gently setting it between his lips. He brought his lighter to it, cupping the flame in his hand to shield it from the gentle breeze, before taking a deep breath in and blowing a cloud of smoke out. Without breaking his gaze straight ahead, he handed the cigarette to Lena, who hesitated before she gently took it between her index and middle fingers.
“How do you put up with that bullshit?”
Sid chuckled, “Honestly, kid… I don’t know… I guess I just need the money.”
She didn’t return his laughter, only taking a long drag of the cigarette before handing it back to him. A conflicted look was plastered on her face. Did she make a mistake taking this job? It paid decently, certainly better than other entry-level jobs, but was all this really worth it? Sid could sense the great discomfort in her silence, so he continued, “Here’s the thing about Gill. He’s a hard ass and a total bitch for Barodius,” Lena shot a slightly confused look as all the names were still new to her, “The store manager. It’s a trickle-down effect of bullshit. Manager gives the store lead shit, so then the store lead shifts the blame to the coach of whatever department isn’t meeting their stupid metrics, and so on… I guess you just learn how to take it with a grain of salt eventually. All we can do is what we’re getting paid for. Nothing more, nothing less, no matter how much the bosses want to guilt trip all of us,” his large hand fell on her small shoulder, jerking her entire body from his unintentional strength. He stuttered out a “sorry” and they both laughed.
From that day forth, her perception of Sid had changed drastically. Instead of an obnoxious attention-seeker, only adored by everyone for his sheer presence in a room, she saw a flame that lit the dark corners of the workplace. His schedule had changed, now putting him closer to the opening hours and giving Lena more time to observe him. Sid wasn’t like other leads, who would leave their associates to fend for themselves while they stood around doing little more than supervising; he was in the midst of everyone, helping with every task and actively working with his team. His playfulness wasn’t just an attempt to attention-seek, but an attempt to bring some humanity back into an environment that actively tried to crush it out of them; an attempt that often drew disdain from the higher-ups. To Lena, he was a true leader to be respected. Throughout the year she would watch him continually put his team first and get beat down by his superiors for it. Nevertheless, he always pushed forward, and as much as the managers didn’t want to admit it, he was certainly one of their most valuable workers.
When she clocked in at 4AM for the morning shift, she made her way to the produce department to find that once again, the cooler was filled with untouched pallets and her team was a skeleton crew. It was going to be a long day, but at least Sid was coming in at 6.