A crowd of two dozen or so people wearing white lab coats walked across a concrete pathway amidst endless rows of water-suspended crops. One man was leading the crowd with a smile plastered on his face, much like a preppy college student might parade hopeful families around a prestigious college campus.
“And now, on your left are our rows of tomato crops. The vines are already an impressive 5 feet tall!”
He veered off his route into the space between the tomato crops. The crowd turned their eyes on the tomato crops, and marveled at them, almost like a luxury. “So, look at these roots here”, he said, pointing to one of the larger vine crop’s roots. “This one here is white and thick, which tells me it’s a healthy plant. Generally speaking, you should check the roots for rot or biofilm every day. Biofilm looks like sporadic gray growths covering parts of the root.”
“What exactly does that look like? ”asked a youthful, pale brunette woman with a yellow legal pad in hand and two neat brown braids in a custom jungle-leaf-patterned bouffant cap.
“Um, I’m glad you asked. We had an outbreak of a pretty nasty biofilm last year, and so we have pictures of it. Let me just… pull it up here” he took out his phone and swiped his fingers down until he eventually turned the phone around and showed it to her. “Yea, as you can see, it appears as a gray mat that stretches between the roots. That’s only when it’s in its advanced stage, though. When it’s just starting to grow, the roots might look a little gray and dusty and the stem might look brown.”
“Wow, okay. That sounds very difficult to deal with,” she said, scribbling down notes on her notepad with her pen in hand.
“Yes, well, that’s why we have you guys, to be our eyes and ears, to make sure the plants are healthy each and every day.” He made a self-congratulatory smile and focused his gaze back on the woman who had asked him the question. “What was your name?”
“Evelyn Troyer, sir.”
“Well, nice to meet you Ms. Troyer.”
Then, he explained a couple unique care needs of tomato crops, reaching his hand over to different parts of the tomato crop aside him in order to enhance his explanation. After explaining each caretaking practice, he would ask them if they had any questions about that particular practice, but no one would respond and half still weren’t making eye contact with him.
Right before he was about to explain how to prune the suckers off of the tomato crops, the instructor glanced at his watch and a flicker of concern crossed his face. His lips pressed together briefly, and his forehead creased into a crumpled map. His eyes closed shut and he thought for an uncomfortably long half of a minute as he desperately attempted to summon the willpower to finish the training session. Several of the trainees raised their gaze to look at him, a bit concerned for the overwhelmed man inside his artificial corporate persona.
“Alright, we are going to move on now to work policies. Follow me back to the break room.”
They followed him over to a narrow door and stepped inside into a small room. Inside it, a grid of a few ceiling troffers cast a dim, yellow light across the sad plain-white walls of the break room. In the center was placed a long rectangular white table around which there were about fifteen or so chairs. In the corner, there were a couple rusty-old vending machines advertising $2.99 Coke’s, soda cans, and Aquafina-brand purified water bottles. The atmosphere here was much more antiquated and melancholic than the spacious well-lit greenhouse that promised progress, a bright future, and some money in that bank account.
The majority of the workers, exhausted. took a seat at the table. The instructor noticed that a couple workers were still standing, so he politely gestured “Please, please, take a seat,” and took a chair out from the table for the closest standing worker to sit on. Once all twelve workers were seated, he pulled out his phone and swiped his fingers down repetitively, until he saw the section on Work Policy.
“Okay,” the instructor announced. “We are going to talk about ‘work policy’. What that means is, shift times, attendance policies, and break periods. For shift times, you need to start your shift by 8:00 AM on every day that you’re working here. The way you start your shift is by scanning your worker ID card with this black barcode scanner, on the wall over there. Once you scan, our app will automatically clock you into your shift.”
“What happens if you start work a few minutes late? Well, if you’re only a couple minutes late—say, before 8:05 AM, then nothing happens. But if you clock in at 8:06 or later, then we will mark that as one tardy. And if you clock in after 9 AM, then you will earn yourself a super-tardy, which is not that super at all,” he laughed a little, and waited a bit to gauge the workers’ reactions.
“A super-tardy means that you’ll be marked as a no-show for that day. Now, if you receive more than 3 tardies or more than 1 unexcused absence, then we will meet with you and you will be subject to a disciplinary action.”
“What happens if we get sick?” one person asked.
“Ah, if you feel sick, please call me or send an email to company HR as soon as possible, to let us know you’re sick and that you will be staying home during your next shift. As long as you send us an email before 10 PM of the night before your next shift, we will not count your absence as unexcused. Any more questions about sick policy?”
He scanned across the room, but saw no reaction from any of the twelve workers, not even a slight nodding of the head.
“Any questions on attendance policy?”
A couple workers yawned and a few others glanced at the analog clock on the wall and then promptly returned their gaze downwards to some indefinite spot on the floor.
“Okay, so now onto: break periods. For a ten-hour shift, you get one large break period for lunch and two smaller break periods. Since your shift starts at 8 AM, your first break is going to be from 10:30 to 10:45 AM. Then, your lunch break will start at noon and end at 12:45. Finally, your third break will go from 3 to 3:15 PM. Any questions about breaks?”
Almost all of the workers awoke as if this last question was a sleeper code and they were all sleeper agents. They were all now looking at the instructor, which almost overwhelmed him. Half of them rose their hands.
“Yes, sir,” the instructor said, extended his right arm over to a thirties-something man confidently donning a gray beret.
“If I finish all my tasks for the day, can I stay here longer than the official break period?” he asked.
The instructor smirked, incredulous at the idea, but quickly forced his lips into a neutral and flat line.
“No, sorry. If you finish all your individual tasks for the day, then you can ask your co-workers if they need help, and then help them out with their tasks. We give you bonus points for your extra effort- just make sure to write down who you helped, what task you helped out with, and for how long. But our app usually assigns enough individual tasks that it’s very unlikely you’ll finish all of your tasks before your afternoon break at 3,” the instructor explained.
“Bonus points? Can I chuck those in for a quick soda?” the man half-joked, half-asked.
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[Does the above dialogue imply that he does not understand the general purpose of bonus points?
i don’t think he would be so unaware to have never heard the term ‘bonus points’. ]
“Well yes, sort of. If you earn enough bonus points, you earn different levels of bonus checks. For example, if you finish all your tasks and then work one hour helping out another person, then you earn one bonus point. If you earn at least five bonus points within a economic quarter, then you earn eighty dollars.”
“Ten extra dollars?” a man in the front exclaimed. “Ain’t it supposed to be a time and a half? So, forty more?”
“Yes, well, since you’re helping out other people within the duration of your assigned shift, it’s technically not overtime, so the ‘time and a half’ law doesn’t apply. A better term for it would be ‘teamtime’.”
The confident beret-wearing man whispered into his friend’s ear. “This sounds overly complicated,”
A young woman with thick glasses, blunt bangs, and long copper layers laying on her shoulders rose her hand.
“Yes ma’am?” the instructor asked.
“Yes, I have diabetes so I need to inject my insulin throughout the day. Can I take a quick ten-minute break in the lounge room to do that whenever I need to?”
“Uh, sure. We can set you up on a different break schedule. Just call Angie at HR, please.”
“Thanks.”
[Possibly here I can add more questions from the 12 workers].
The instructor gave a small smile at the woman, and then turned his attention to the broader table of new trainees. “Okay, any more questions?” he inquired.
After hearing “Okay, so, we are going to move on to prep for tomorrow. Everyone, please open up your Orbit app on your phone.”
The workers pulled out their phones, and a series of quiet, dopamine-inducing high-pitched whoosh’s sounded out as they opened up Orbit. Once a couple people had turned their attention to the instructor, he said:
“Okay, you should be seeing a list of tasks for you to complete during your shift tomorrow. Everyone sees that, right?”
A couple people nodded, but most just sat in silence.
“Okay, if no one says ‘no’, I’m going to take that as a ‘yes’,” he said.
He waited there in silence, still no reaction from the soon-to-be hydroponics workers.
“Okay, congrats everyone! Training is over! The time is 6 PM. Always make sure to take off your work apron and other PPE before you leave! I am officially done, so I am going to drive back home now, but if you have any urgent questions during work tomorrow, you can give me a call. My name is Andrew Chapman.”
With that, the instructor took the direct exit out of the lounge room, and the workers slowly, but surely, started conversing with each other.
[Caroline and Lucía talk to each other, since they already know each other]
Evelyn, the woman with two symmetrical long braids, saw the instructor’s exist as an opportunity for her to leave and bike home for the day. However, she had to stop herself when she realized the depressing, single apartment she had waiting for her, and so, she promptly let herself fall back onto the chair and attempt to make conversation with the eleven other people, all unfamiliar to her.
The woman sitting to her left was a blonde woman, a bit older than her. She was talking with a woman in a red button-up blouse with her hair braided into a crown– what must’ve been a close friend, from how animated she and her friend’s arms seemed to be. Evelyn awkwardly waited a couple minutes on her phone for the strangers’ conversation to end. “Hi, I’m Evelyn,” she said, leaning in towards the blonde woman.
“I’m Caroline,” the blonde woman stated, rather matter-of-factly.
“Cool! Nice- nice to meet you,” Evelyn nervously stammered.
“So where you from, Evelyn?“, Caroline calmly and confidently inquired.
“Uh, East Hampton. You could tell I’m not from around here?” Evelyn said, her lips parted and her eyes widened in surprise.
The woman chuckled and answered, “Yea, I mean earlier today you cozied up quite nice to the college preppy instructor guy. People from ‘round here usually have a well-earned hatred for those types.”
Not knowing how to respond, Evelyn started twiddling her thumbs around.
“Plus, you’re awfully nervous.”
“Oh, ok.”
“So you didn’t answer my question. Where you from, new girl?” Caroline asked with a warm, friendly smile on her face.
“Uh, Cobblestone Alley.”
“And where is that?”
“Oh, uh, ummm, well it’s on the east side of Hampton, not too far from downtown. Do you know where the East Hampton area generally is?”
“I’ve visited the city, before, hon, but I don’t remember all the neighborhood names. Could you describe it more?”
“Uh, sure. So, umm… where to begin…” Evelyn took a sigh to collect her thoughts. “So, it’s like half-residential, half-businesses. Very boring part of town, I think, because there’s no parks, no community centers. My whole childhood was spent entirely at home or at school."
“Still not remembering,” Caroline said, her brows now furrowed and her lips now pressed together.
“There’s train tracks running down the center of where I grew up. The one part of town where the train literally never comes anymore?”
“Ohhhh, Cobblestone Alley!” the woman in the red-shirt next to Caroline interjected, after having been on her phone.
Caroline and Evelyn turned to their left, their raised brows and parted lips converting a slight surprise at the interjector.
“Ah-ha! I was secretly paying attention to yall’s convo,” she clarified, her smile so wide that her cheeks lifted high.
“I had an uncle who lived in Cobblestone. Every day he biked to his job a mile away because there literally was no train service over there, lol,” she said.
Her eyes opened up as she realized she had forgotten to introduce herself to the new person. “Oh, I’m Lucía, by the way,” she told Evelyn.
“Hi, I’m Evelyn,” Evelyn said.
[Caroline, Evelyn, and Lucía talk for some more.
Perhaps one of them references the local community garden, so Evelyn asks more about this community garden, since she cares a lot about fresh produce.
This convo introduces basic aspects of Caroline’s personality
This convo introduces basic aspects of Lucía’s personality
This convo explains more of Caroline and Lucía’s long-time friendship with each other, which will be important for Chapter 4: Rotten Day and for Chapter 5: Block Party, because in both of those chapters, Caroline and Lucía are working/talking with each other for most of the chapter.
]
[
The convo between Caroline, Evelyn, and Lucía somehow finds a natural ending, or one of the 3 people gets tired and says that they need to go home.
]
Caroline’s phone rang, but she left it unanswered. “I’ve got to go now. My husband just got here.” Caroline announced. With that, the three picked up their backpacks and headed straight for the door to exit the greenhouse. They had been the last ones in the lounge room, so when the last of the three had left, the lounge room’s lights automatically turned off.
Outside, a small Ford pickup truck’s lights shone onto the three women in the darkness of the late, post-sunset evening. “That’s him. Glad we talked. And so nice to meet you Evelyn,” Caroline said.
“Okay, byeeeee!” Lucía yelled out.
“Bye,” Evelyn quietly said.
When Caroline’s truck had left the parking lot, Evelyn turned to Lucía, who was checking something on her phone.
“So, it is getting kinda late, so I’m thinking of heading out here,” Evelyn said.
“Oh yea, me too. Got to go home and relax,” Lucía agreed.
“Do you have a friend or family picking you up?” Evelyn asked.
“Oh no, I have a bike. I live ten minutes away, so it’s not the worst thing ever,” she said.
“I also have a bike. I kinda wish I had a car, because today was already very exhausting for me, and that was just training day.”
“Oh no, girl, same. But you do what you can, I guess,” Lucía consoled.
“Yea, I guess that’s how it is.” Evelyn said.
Lucía and Evelyn walked along the sidewalk over to the bike rack. Theirs were the only two bikes left.
Once both had sat down on their bikes, Evelyn said “Okay, headed home now. This was really fun.”
“Yea, it was. Goodnight, Evelyn!” Lucía said.
With that, they each biked their separate ways: Evelyn exiting the parking lot onto Ram Street and Lucía turning onto Amber street.
[Evelyn goes to her apartment building.]