Welfare and Warfare

Chapter 27

Day: 3224

Days Left: 2256

Lives Saved: 17

After his final week of working in the sanitation unit, Henry started his trial shift at the requisition office. For his trial, he was to shadow Rin as she showed him the ropes. Once Henry introduced himself to the other workers, a small team that liaises with the much larger scavenger team, Rin went through all of the procedures of recording down stock. Henry had to stop himself from making any comments on the system. They were just minor tweaks, but it was wise not to try and take control as a new employee. Rin and the others knew their job the best, but Henry could not help himself in seeing improvements everywhere he looked. The perfectionist could never be satiated and would love to be satisfied with something in his life, to declare that something was complete and as great as it could be. No matter, he would either learn to control himself and not be annoyed by these thoughts or make these tweaks himself if he rose to a high enough status to do so without offence.

As Rin wanted to hire Henry mainly for the customer service aspect of the job, she showed him the procedures for the opening, having called him earlier so that they could open on time. The instructions were simple enough, but Henry still felt the need to jot everything down in his notebook, which seemed to grant a great deal of amusement from Rin. While he was making notes, he would catch her staring at him so intensely.

"Everything alright?" he asked, feeling slightly exposed after such a study.

There was a smirk to Rin's lips. "You really must be related; Corinna would always be writing in her notebook too, even writing down useless things that anyone could remember."

"Well," Henry cleared his throat. "They're never useless."

"You're making a copy of the record code as we speak. The key is posted everywhere in the warehouse and right next to the log book." Rin folded her arms. "You don't need to write it down."

Henry shrugged. "I was... going to study it at home so I can remember all of the shorthand."

Rin let out what was perhaps almost a stifled laugh, before rolling her eyes. "Don't worry, there won't be an exam." She headed over to the door, turning over the sign in the window to show that the requisition office was open. "Just relax. It's only your first day."

There weren't any customers straight away, so Henry helped Rin prepare and pack deliveries for later. When a customer did come in, Rin let Henry do all the work. Henry was a bit flustered to start with as he thought he would be shadowing Rin and not her shadowing him until he made a mistake, however, Henry's natural charm snapped on and he followed a simple flow chart of customer service interactions; first asking how their day was, mostly a rhetorical question, followed by how he could help them, and then resorted to either his notebook or Rin on what the customer needed. Henry and Rin took it in turns with serving the customer whilst the other searched the warehouse, with Henry only needing to ask a few times for help in finding the required items.

After a couple hours, Rin took Henry to help deliver items around the city. There was a separate office that specialised in deliveries, pulling carts around The Warren, though their focus was on the businesses, construction, and welfare of the city, meanwhile the deliveries that the requisition office made were of more personal matters, of larger items that they could not simply take with them from the office. Rin would normally not be the one to carry out these deliveries, and Henry would likely not also when he assumed his role fully, but he had to learn all of the ropes in case the usual workers were unavailable and their positions needed filling. Fortunately, the deliveries were relatively light so Henry and Rin, neither having masks that granted much strength, had no issues pulling the small wagon. The first few stops were to residents, a few of which were not a home and so their items were left by their doors, the city so trusting that no one would steal it. One of the customers that was home was one of the friends Henry made during his time in the sanitation unit, the brownie in charge of the night shifts.