John is On Thin Ice

John is on thin fucking ice.

At first, his workplace slip-ups were minuscule, easily brushed off as growing pains in his new role at the warehouse. To anyone else, every mistake would be minor; forgetting to turn off the lights when he clocks out, leaving half-eaten lunches on work tables.

Unfortunately for John, his supervisor was very good at keeping score. His boss often reminded his employees how much patience he has to carry in a day, and his arms get tired.

On Friday afternoon, he caught John playing Jenga with a forklift and railroad ties. He shouted John’s new status right in the middle of the warehouse.

“John, you’re on thin fucking ice.”

John spent the weekend mulling over what went so wrong. He is scatter-brained, sure; leaving lunches around is an honest mistake. But everything else was a complete misunderstanding. It was a slow day on Friday, so he decided to practice his forklift skills with old wood from the junkyard. Plus, he isn’t even the last one to leave the office at night—an old guy leaves at almost midnight because his heater quit right as winter storms are blowing in. And who is John to rat him out? If the boss cared that much, he could afford cameras for the place.

Monday morning, John waltzed into work with determination. A biting wind shook the metal warehouse. Every worker holed up inside, making themselves look busy by taking apart equipment and putting it back together.

John jumped into action the minute his boots hit the concrete. He couldn’t afford to sit around and risk the boss man’s wrath. He picked up various projects, never giving himself a break; by noon, the warehouse was mopped, de-greased, and organized.

He ate his sandwich in the employee kitchen, watching clouds out the window that overlooked the junkyard. If it weren’t so windy, John would go out and clean the rusted mess. He made a mental note for Tuesday’s projects. He was excited; he felt his hard work pumping through his veins.

Just as he ate his last bite, his boss strut into the kitchen and threw open the fridge. He was a pudgy man that wore a suit from three sizes ago. His comb-over was disturbed from the wind, desperately slicked down with water and stuck to his head in thick tendrils.

His boss pulled out a sparkling water and frowned at John while he sipped. “John,” he said with a small burp. “What are you doing?”

John stood straighter. This was his chance to impress the boss. “Just finishing lunch, sir.”

His boss’ eyes flicked to John’s empty hands. “Lunch, huh?”

John’s jaw dropped. “I swear I just finished a sandwich.”

“Do you think,” his boss continued, slurping his sparkling water. “It’s fair to everyone in the warehouse who is working their tail feathers off while you stand in here, wasting time?”

“I have been working hard today, sir—”

“And tell me, why is it the warehouse is spotless while my scrap metal looks like the Great Garbage Patch?” he snapped, pointing out the window.

“It’s too windy to work outside,” John mumbled.

“What? Is the wind gonna mess up your hairdo?” His boss threw the sparkling water can in the trash and bent in the fridge for another. “Get to work, boy. Remember what I said on Friday?”

“Thin ice,” John said.

He used his boss’ brief distraction of sparkling water to hurry out of the kitchen. He snatched his jacket off the hanger and, despite his best judgment, exits the warehouse.

The wind nipped at him as soon as he stepped onto the gravel road, blowing hard enough to make his eardrums ache. He popped his collar and stormed toward the massive lot filled with rusted junk. His boss hasn’t touched the scraps in years. He made a habit of dragging various metal pieces from estate sales he deemed worthy of ‘up-selling.’ Any open space was quickly occupied by new garbage.

John took one look at the junkyard and knew he could move anything by hand. He was temporarily suspended from the forklift, but if he used the wench truck’s mini-crane, he could haul thousands of pounds into neat piles.

One by one John lifted metal onto wooden pallets hooked onto the truck’s crane. The heavy machine parts were a breeze; it was the thin sheet metal that gave John pause. From the driver’s seat, he raised a serrated sheet in the air and watched the wind catch on the metal’s edge and lift it up.

A familiar yelling across the lot made him wince. His boss’ chubby frame wobbled toward the truck. John grit his teeth and rolled down the window.

“You’re driving off with my metal!” he shouted.

John pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, sir. I’m doing what you asked.”

A gust of wind swung the truck’s crane side to side. The pallet undulated, but the metal slammed hard as if it was weightless, the serrated edges digging in the wood.

“You’ve pissed me off for the last time!” the boss shouted.

Another gust shook the truck. “Can I lower the pallet and talk about this inside? The windstorm is gonna—”

“That’s another thing,” his boss interrupted, wagging a finger and stepping away from the truck. “Always coming up with an excuse to get out of trouble. It’s never your fault, is it, John?”

The wind gave one final shriek and lifted the metal sheet. It flung through the air in a spiral. John’s boss opened his mouth right as the metal sheet glided through his hairless head.

John debated long and hard how he would explain the gash left in his boss’ temple. Not that anyone would believe John if he told the truth, anyway. If only his boss had invested in security cameras. Then he would have seen John was not the last to leave at night, and he was the only one that remembered to clean behind his work bench. The cameras would have seen John put the truck keys in his boss’ cold hands, wipe the truck door handle of fingerprints, and run into the warehouse screaming.

Now, John inspects the screws in the piece of equipment he just took apart, making sure it was up to company standards when he put it back together. He adjusts his hard hat, a new policy put in place by some higher-up official after the accident. The new boss is too frightful of the junkyard. As long as sales grow, he could care less about in-person visits.

The clock hand hits five o’clock. John grabs his jacket and looks over his shoulder. The old man waves from his seat. John waves back.