The third installment

An automated voice chirped "Thank you for starting your day with Start Mart" as he crept through the sliding door, knocking over the stack of bright green shopping baskets that stood beside the entrance. Five minutes late. But maybe Marge had not taken roll yet. Maybe he was still in time for the Sample Wars announcement.

Every work place has certain traditions, intended to inject vitality and ambition into an environment where the day often falls into plodding routine. These traditions usually involve competitions, tournaments that, like marathons or jousts, allow individuals to compare skill and showcase impressive talents. But while most contests are held in good humor, with an understanding that the entire thing is not meant to be taken too seriously, the weekly Sample Wars at Start Mart often escalated into something much more desperate. In a realm where work mainly consisted of unpacking oranges, sweeping aisles of canned goods and arranging packages on hooks, there were few such chances for anyone to satisfy their need to conquer, to prove their own superiority.

Contrary to its name, the Sample Wars depended a great deal more on your luck in the food draw than on any pea flicking abilities. As long as the slip you drew from the tray was a popular item, as long as enough people decided to purchase, for example, frozen chicken wings after visiting your sample stand, you would be crowned King or Queen for a day. But whereas victory was sometimes easily attainable, failure was at times just as certain. Once assigned something like lima bean dip or brussel sprouts, you understood from the beginning that it was a lost cause.The rest of the afternoon would be spent watching hordes of people gathering in front of other stands, emptying the sample trays the moment the potato wedges came out of the microwave and carting away shopping carts filled with frozen pizzas. 

It sounded comical, but these contests came to mean more than frozen foods or being crowned SMart King or Queen. They came to symbolize agency, the power to influence some course of action, if not his own, and his inability to sell lima bean dip seemed to him to summarize everything that was defective in him.

While Marge Lionel did feel it was necessary to enforce her authority as Head Manager, she did not take particular pleasure in reprimanding her staff or humiliating latecomers.  But as is often the case when it comes to human interaction, her treatment of Boggs that morning was driven by a series of circumstances that were not all directly related. She had run out of eggs and toast and so ate nothing but crackers for breakfast. After taking the elevator down to the basement she had remembered that her sister had borrowed her car for the day, and in the time it took her to remember this, she missed the bus. As shipment of bottled water was missing. There was a leak in the bathroom downstairs. 

Then there was the fact that it had been Boggs again.

His repeated tardiness despite threats of earlier shifts and extra hours confirmed what she already knew: that he would not continue to be late despite her warnings, and that there were other factors in his life that wielded more influence than she did ever could. These reminders of the one-sided nature of her feelings hurt her, and though she suspected that most at Start Mart held little respect for her, his continued disregard struck her as betrayal. That he could not see how she protected him, how she hid his tardiness from the owner though twelve late slips far exceeded the limit, how she had had a crush on him since his arrival at the supermarket two years ago seemed to her a sort of rejection. 

Nevertheless, for all her insults and threats, Marge had never planned to turn him in. But the late slips were adding up, and she could not protect him for much longer.