The Factory Read online

  One Monday morning, when I got to work, there were walls between the desks that hadn’t been there when we’d left the week before. Up to that point, our desks had been arranged into stations with four seats, one set near the window and the other near the door. We’d been sitting two per station, diagonally across from our station partners, but now there were thick partitions surrounding each desk. Nonpermanent staff don’t work over the weekend, so they must have hired contractors to come in and install them. I know we’re just temps, but how insensitive can they be? There’s no way they could have set up these barriers without rummaging through our desks and personal property. When I walked in, Irinoi was already there. I fumbled through a hello, then made my way to my usual seat by the window. I felt as though I’d entered a cubicle made to fit exactly one person. There was enough space for me to do my work, but not much else. The new walls were made of metal, covered with something like carpet so you could tack papers onto them. They were about five feet tall, so you could see over them if you were standing, but sitting at your desk all you could see was a screen of fabric. I bet Kasumi, short as she was, couldn’t see over them, even on her tiptoes. What made them decide to put these walls in? They probably spent a good amount of money doing it, too. But it definitely seemed like one of those decisions that everyone involved should know about beforehand. “Wow, what — what is this?” Kasumi said as she came in, walked to her desk and put her bag down. It was hard to have a conversation without both of us standing up. I got up so I could see her. “Hey, it was like this when I came in this morning. Did you know this was going to happen?” She shook her head and took off her jacket. “No . . . I can’t believe it. What’s going on?” We went to sit at the same time. Maybe they thought these dividers would help with our productivity. Maybe they weren’t wrong. I wouldn’t get distracted when Kasumi popped a piece of candy into her mouth every ten to twelve minutes, or whenever the other women started talking or laughing. I still had no idea what the younger one was named. Irinoi was always calling her Maimi or Mamimi or something, but she wore her name tag backward so no one could read it. No more awkward grins, either, when I yawned or sneezed only to find them looking at me. This’ll definitely make it easier to stay focused. That has to be why they had the dividers installed: to increase our productivity. Before the next bell, I put everything they’d moved back to where it had been, then continued comparing the documents I’d been working on the week before. Nothing out of place. I bet it was two copies of the same printout. By now, I understood that, simple as they seemed, it was the documents with no obvious mistakes that were the most demanding. When there’s no reason to use your pen, it’s just your eyes and head that get worn out, and you’re constantly second-guessing yourself, wondering if you failed to catch some glaring error. Then, I look again and inevitably find something, usually some huge mistake. It always makes me doubt my value as a professional reader. Every time I see an ad for a correspondence course in proofreading, I’m tempted to go for it. I feel as though I’ll never develop like this, just sitting around, checking these documents. Besides, there’s no reason to think anyone even sees the documents once I’ve checked them. All I know is that the completed jobs are collected and taken somewhere, but I have no idea where they go or who receives them. I have no clue if I’m doing my job correctly, so how could I hope to get better? It’s pretty obvious that asking Kasumi or the others for help would be totally pointless. I’m going to have to figure this out on my own. As soon as the first bell rang, I started flipping through the papers on my desk. Same as always, Maimi or Mamimi or whatever her name was barely made it into the office in time. She looked at her desk, now cut off from the rest of the world, pulled the candy-shaped earbuds out of her ears and said, “Wait, what? Where’d the walls come from? What’s the big idea?” You’re a temp. Try showing up a little earlier. She took off her girlish knit cap and started talking to Irinoi: “Hey, listen to this, Irinoi-san. He failed again!” “Your brother?” “Yeah, the stylist test or whatever. I swear, he’s such an idiot. And my mom — my mom bought another DVD box set, some Korean drama.” The bell rang again. It was 9 a.m. They lowered their voices a little, but just kept on chatting. Dividers clearly meant nothing to them.

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  Itsumi and the Captain switched to shochu. I ordered a lemon sour. It had been a long time since I’d been out drinking, and it didn’t take me long to get buzzed. Dipped in tare sauce, the tripe was really good, but right after I swallowed it, I thought I could feel it coming up again, so I started talking a lot, hoping that would help keep everything down. I started talking about my past, my struggles. It was my own voice, but it didn’t sound anything like me. I didn’t even know if it was my turn to talk, but I kept going. Chopsticks in hand, Itsumi tended to the grill, now and then saying, “This one’s ready.” “I’ll take it.” I’m always taking shit from everyone. At least I used to, up until now. “I could go for another dish of kimchi.” “I think I’m ready for noodles.” “I want the bibimbap, but not the stone-roasted one, the other one.” “Kim, kimchi, noodles.” “I’m ready for another drink — so I’ll go with kimchi and, yeah, maybe I’ll get the noodles.” “What about you, Ushiyama-san?” I decided to get noodles, too, and another lemon sour. “Hello, we’re ready to order.” The waiter Itsumi flagged down informed us that the noodles would take some time, so we went with liver sashimi, kimchi, and more drinks instead. As soon as the order was in, Itsumi turned back to me and asked, “Ushiyama-san, what do you think of the job?” Itsumi and the Captain can really handle their liquor. “You don’t change much when you drink, either, Ushiyama-san.” But that’s not true. I get really hot. I burn up. More than that, I talk a lot more than I should. Itsumi’s mouth curved into a smile, but behind her glasses her pupils appeared shrunken and lackluster. I tried to talk, but the inside of my mouth was sticky. I plucked an ice cube from my glass and put it in my mouth, then spat it back out. The cold hurt. What do I think of my job? It was easy enough. I didn’t think I’d made any disastrous errors so far — and I didn’t see myself making any in the future. Everyone was nice, too. They were kind. I didn’t need to use my head. But there was something almost vicious behind Itsumi’s question. What did she want me to say? Just then, the liver came. I grabbed a piece off the plate and threw it in my mouth. It was still frozen.

  “What kind of work are you doing there?” my brother’s girlfriend asked. Goto warned me about saying too much to outsiders, but I hadn’t come across any document that
was worth leaking, that I could possibly be paid for. Any secret worth protecting wasn’t going to end up at the shredder station. Departments would handle anything that sensitive internally. It’s obvious if you think about it. So why not tell her? When I said I work in print support, shredding documents, she jerked back and said, “Seriously? You mean you’re on your feet all day?” Well, I have a chair. I’m sitting most of the time. Of course our chairs are old hand-me-downs from who knows what department. The cloth of my seat is in tatters, with a disintegrating layer of jaundiced foam underneath. It’s on rickety casters, and there’s a knob under the seat so you can adjust the height, but as soon as you put any weight on it, the seat slips back down to the lowest setting. When I’m sitting, I can’t feed the machine comfortably. My hands get tired, but standing all day is out of the question.

  When I get to work in the morning, I walk downstairs, open the basement door, pass the Print Services Branch Office, and head to the lockers. As I make my way across the floor, Goto and the others are seated, looking at their computers, dusting the printers or chatting among themselves. At the shredder station, Hanzake’s there, and ever since we went out for yakiniku with the Captain, he’s said hello in the morning. “Morning.” “Good morning.” I pass through the shredder station, open the door on the other side, and go over to the lockers, where I take off my jacket — if I’m wearing one — grab my apron, and put it on. I tuck my badge inside my shirt, to make sure it doesn’t get chewed up by my shredder, and tie the apron straps tight around my waist. Then, back at the shredder station, I sit down at my usual chair, in front of my usual machine. Before TRAN brings the morning load, we still have the leftover paper from the day before, so there’s work to do as soon as we arrive, but honestly there’s no rush. To begin with, the others don’t even show up early. I feel terrible if I’m not there by 8:30, but that’s just my personality. When I show up, Hanzake’s usually the only one there. Most mornings, I’m second to show, but sometimes the Giant’s there before me. Either way, once I’m seated and ready to go, I’ll pull out the book I brought with me and start reading. Meanwhile, Print Services is getting livelier by the minute. They’re unpacking paper, talking about the night before, sharing sugary snacks. As a rule, the people sitting in chairs at the islands are quiet, but everyone joins the conversation when something like golf comes up. Itsumi never shows before 8:50 a.m., and most of the time she arrives after the first bell. Once a week, the Captain doesn’t come in until the afternoon: “Well well well. Look who’s too good to start in the morning.” “You know I can’t keep the nurses at the hospital waiting.” “A real ladies’ man, that’s what you are.” When the first bell sounds, Print Services starts their morning meeting and I close my book and get to it. The mouth of the shredder is the same size as the length of B4 paper. We have one shredder that can handle A0 size, but we almost never use it. When I first saw that gigantic machine, I had no idea what it was. It looked more like a kayak than a shredder. I only figured it out when somebody from Print Services came over with a giant roll of paper and fed it to the machine. Things like that happened from time to time: someone from Print Services would waltz into our territory and use our machinery — but they have a regular-size shredder in their own area, so it doesn’t happen very often. Flipping on the main power to the shredders, I pull paper from yesterday’s load and set up a ten-gallon trash bag. The bags fill twice in the morning and three times in the afternoon. We mostly shred standard A4-size documents and feed them in lengthwise. For a seamless feed, you grab the next stack with your left hand while loading the paper with your right. The machine tugs on the paper, drawing your hand toward it, almost like a handshake. At first, I couldn’t keep myself from giggling. Once the shredder starts sucking the paper in, you pull lightly so there’s no slack. You do this to keep the paper from crumpling as it passes through the blades — otherwise the machine jams, crunching to a halt. Too many sheets at once guarantees a jam, so the ideal method is a steady stream of fewer sheets. Using one shredder for too long will make it overheat, and when that happens you move on to the next machine. We have more shredders than employees, so we can switch from one machine to another with ease. The first time I did, it almost felt like I was choosing my own partner, like I was an active member of society. Of course, that feeling didn’t last. From my second day on the job, barring the occasional jam, I never had to use a single brain cell.

  My brother said he was going to bring his girlfriend home. I was hoping he’d do it when I was at work, but since all three of us had the same days off, there didn’t seem to be any way around it. I figured I’d just go hide in the convenience store while she was visiting, but she showed up half a day early. The three of us ended up having tea together, then we went to the tonkatsu place near our house to eat. She arrived carrying five chocolate croissants. Considering the size of her face, all of her features seemed slightly too small. Only her mouth looked large, spanning her face, revealing deep wrinkles every time she spoke or smiled. I bet some people find that likeable. She’s using liquid lipstick to cover up the wrinkles around her mouth. Orange beige — a shade natural enough that most men probably don’t realize. Dark brown eyeliner to make her eyes stand out. Fake eyelashes, too, the kind that almost look natural. She was tall and thin. I guess she wasn’t completely revolting. Her long black hair was almost exotic. In a way, she looked more Asian than Japanese. My brother gave me a look like he knew what I was thinking. His girlfriend had a permanent position at a major temp agency, where she worked as a sales rep and coordinator, connecting temp workers and businesses. “We have a lot of people at the factory. You wouldn’t know it by looking, but I think more than half the employees there are nonpermanent. It’s the same for all the big corporations these days.” Then she looked at my brother and asked, “She’s a temp, right?” I’m right here. “Contract worker,” he said, drinking his tea. “It’s been forever since I’ve had tonkatsu. I’m going to order the pickled plum and shiso cutlet with fried shrimp set. What about you, Yoshiko?” Me? “I’ll have the special pork loin,” my brother said. I got the fillet cutlet. For whatever reason, my brother’s girlfriend started talking about the types of women who do temp work. “So there are two types. One type — you’re just like why are you even doing this? Know what I mean? They’re super-talented, bright women. Then there’s the total opposite. You need to teach these girls everything, literally. How to say good morning, everything.” “It sounds like most of them are just hopeless,” my brother said, drinking more tea. I could hear oil sizzling in the kitchen. The restaurant was maybe half full, and most of the customers were families. “It’s actually split right down the middle. But that still means half of them have no real value. But my agency has to try to present them to companies as valuable, right?” My food arrived first. “Don’t wait for us.” I snapped my chopsticks and got started. As soon as I did, my brother’s special loin came, but his girlfriend’s cutlet and shrimp set was nowhere to be seen. She kept talking, tracing the rim of her teacup with one finger. “Every company uses temps to cut costs, but things never go the way they want because they’re not investing in their own talent. And when things go badly, they just bring in new people, but that never works out. Well, I guess I’m the last person who should admit this, but still . . . It goes the other way, too. If the temp doesn’t like it, she’ll just quit. She’s thinking she shouldn’t have to work so hard, blah blah blah. But it makes you wonder. Is that how you’re going to do things for the rest of your life? I mean, it’s fine when you’re still young. Things’ll work out. But when your parents get older or you have your own family to look after, you kinda need to do things right. There’s nothing wrong with temp work, though. If you can make up your mind, like, I’m going to do this, and give it your all, that attitude opens all kinds of doors.” My brother ripped through his pork, barely bothering to chew. He called the waiter over for another helping of rice, then asked, “You really think so?” She turned to him, opening her wi
de mouth, showing all her teeth. “The important thing is that you give it everything you’ve got.” “Sorry for the wait. I have the ladies’ special.” Her plum and shiso cutlet came with a little saucer of ponzu with grated radish in it. She picked up her chopsticks, scraped the tartar sauce from the shrimp onto her plate and asked me, “Which department do you work for again?” Print Services. It was too much work to say anything about the Branch Office. In all honesty, I wasn’t even sure there was a main office. “So you make brochures? Product manuals?” In our office, we don’t work on things like that. We only print internal documents, nothing that really matters. The stakes are pretty low. But recently everyone’s been getting worked up over the notices about animals running wild around the factory: stray dogs and cats, crows and coypus. (“What’s a coypu?” “Oh, I saw one of those.” “Crazy, I mean, scary.” “Not really. I wasn’t scared. They’re kind of like really big marmots.” “You don’t think a really big marmot is scary?” “They weren’t here before, right?” “I don’t know. I remember hearing rumors when I started. I thought they were just otters or something.”) When I mentioned coypus, my brother sat up. “Yeah, I saw that on the news. They’re running rampant all over the place. It’s a serious problem.” His girlfriend took the tartar sauce and slathered it over her cabbage. She still hadn’t taken a bite, but my brother was eighty percent done. I was sure he was about to ask for more cabbage. Maybe she can’t read him, but I can. Without a word, my brother grabbed my purple pickles because he knows I can’t stand them. He took one big bite, then said, “They’re rodents. They were imported to Japan before the war for their fur. Then they went feral. They’re all over the country now. Hey, excuse me — can I get some more cabbage? Not that much.” “They said that on the news. Hey, Yoshiko-chan, have you ever seen one?” Now she’s calling me Yoshiko-chan? I felt like an iguana was crawling around my insides. It’s one thing if an aunt calls me that, but it was my first time meeting this woman. What the hell was she trying to do? Maybe she thought she was being friendly, but I didn’t need her friendship. I didn’t want it. Every word that came out of her mouth made it that much harder to tolerate her. My brother knows how much I hate being called that, but he didn’t say anything. He just kept eating. Maybe he was too embarrassed. I tried to let it go, but then she started dipping her pork in the ponzu. She took a bite, added more sauce and took another bite, even though it already had an umeboshi inside. “I think I like it better with bulldog sauce.” What was my brother thinking getting involved with this hideous freak? “But, yeah, it’s basically a really big rat.” “Good morning.” “Morning.” It was raining, but the basement was the same as ever. Always the same temperature, the same humidity. A muffled, manmade air. The smell of rain clung to my clothes and hair, but that never lasted. “It’s really pouring, huh?” “I know, it’s horrible.” At Print Services, they were talking at length about the relationship between humidity and paper quality. Maybe they have a sensitivity for the dampness of paper that we simply lack in the Shredder Squad. Rain or sleet, nothing changes for us. Same for TRAN, sweating in their jackets all year round. Itsumi rushed in, her hair all over the place, clearly upset about something. “It’s too soon . . . She’s only twenty years old, my daughter, my baby girl. And now she’s going to have a baby of her own. What about college? What about me? I’m gonna be a grandmother.” Grandmother? Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw one of the smaller women in Print Services holding a black bird by its wings, but when I looked again it was just a toner cartridge. The woman was down on one knee, swapping it out. She put the old one in the empty box, then TRAN came and took it away.