The Part Time People

THE PART-TIME PEOPLE

By TOM LICHTENBERG

CHAPTER ONE

DeBarrie's needed help again. The part time people never lasted very long. The most recent had seemed okay at first. His name was Martin and he played the flute. He was fluent in German, and he liked to watch reality television. Joe DeBarrie scanned Martin’s old application one more time before consigning it to the trash bin. It didn't tell him much. His own remarks were limited to "clean, plain, straight-forward". Now, only two months later, he marveled at how wrong he'd been. Maybe it’s me, he thought, I really know how to pick them.

Aside from the part time people problem, DeBarrie's Stationery ran like a well inked machine. Joe and his brother Mike ran the place. They were the third generation of DeBarrie's to do so. Joe had the management job. He took care of all the buying, hiring, and paperwork. Mike took care of all the sales activity on the floor. This was the time-honored division of labor established by their father, Mike Senior, the patriarch.

They were an unlikely pair. Joe was tall and thin, had lousy eyesight and started going bald when he was twenty one. He was quiet, slow, methodical, and never made a movement that he didn't seem to have carefully considered first. Mike was short and bulky, dark haired, energetic, active, the spitting image of the old man. He was always in motion, always doing something. He was extremely quick when it came to things about the store, but impenetrably slow on other matters.

Mike was loud and cheerful, always ready with a positive thought, always thinking the best of everything and everyone. It wasn't that he was dumb, because he wasn't, but because he felt it was the happiest way to live, and he was right.

DeBarrie's had one other full time employee, Gwen Carter. She usually worked the register, and also helped Mike with sales. Gwen had started out as a part-timer herself a few years earlier

Joe wished they could do without the extra help. The trouble was that no one wanted to work six shifts a week. They needed someone to help on Mondays, Saturdays, and Thursday evening. The business couldn't afford being closed on Saturday, and there were regular customers who depended on the Thursday evening hours. This all meant that a part time person was unavoidable. If only they weren't such a pain, he thought. Well, as long as we don't get another Martin, Joe told himself, it will be okay, but still he felt that somehow it was all his fault. Oh well, he thought, chalk it all up to experience. He stuffed the application in the folder and slammed the file drawer shut. He picked up the “Help Wanted” sign from behind the cabinet, and ventured out into the store to put it on the window. I'll have to make another sign soon, he thought, this one's already falling apart.

Mike glanced at the sign as he walked in. “Martin?” He asked.

“Yeah, I guess he really isn’t coming back, We’ve given it as much time as we can. At least Gwen’s happy. She always thought he was creepy.” Joe said.

“Don’t worry Joe, we’ll find someone we can live with soon enough.” Mike went over to the safe to get the money for the register.

Joe waited for Mike to count the money before he unlocked the doors, “Open for business” He said. And that was about all the work Joe had to do in the shop that day. Sometimes he felt like a part time person himself. Not that he didn't belong, that he wasn't essential and important to the business, but just that he was extra. He couldn't explain it to himself. His work was almost entirely behind the scenes, and he often felt out of touch with the everyday operations of the place. I should work on Saturdays and Thursday evenings, he thought. I should be out here on the floor more often, and then we could forget about the part time people altogether. But that would never work, and he knew it. He hated selling things. He simply couldn't deal with it.

Joe had never shown the interest or the aptitude for sales. He had resented having to work in the store when he was younger, unlike Mike who loved coming to DeBarrie's with their father. Not wanting to work at DeBarrie's was the main reason Joe left home as soon as he was old enough. He'd gone off to college intending to become a teacher. He even got his teaching degree. A few months in front of classrooms full of students, all expecting so much from him and it was over. He couldn’t take the pressure. He wasn't cut out for it, he'd told himself. A teacher couldn't be invisible or quiet. So he came home, and went to work in the store.

Mike didn't resent his return at all. In fact he was happy that Joe was there to do the necessary office work. Mike had the sales floor to himself. He was the master of the world out there. And he was very good at it.

Mike and Joe both felt, and often said to one another, that if they could find the perfect part time person, it would put to rest the only problem that they had. And it was ridiculous that such a little thing could go on and mar their happiness month after month, year after year.

Every time Joe lost another part time person he went through this same cycle of reasoning, and every time his decision turned out the same. They would have to hire another one.

Later that day, Joe came out from hiding in his office, rushing past the customers so they wouldn't have a chance to stop him and ask him questions. At the front he gathered the morning's harvest of applications. There was only one.

"How's business?" he asked Gwen.

"Pretty slow today," she said. Joe didn't mind. He knew the store was in good shape. They had a good lease, steady customers, and no competition for miles in any direction. It was an easy life, too easy, he often thought.

Years ago, the part time problem was considered to be just a bit of bad luck. But over time, DeBarrie's had gone through many part-timers and the problem had assumed an absurd dimension. It became thought of as the family curse. Every time they lost another part-timer it meant extra shifts, cancelled plans, interrupted weekends. The part time people always left or just disappeared at the most inconvenient times, as if deliberately trying to upset their quiet and routine lives.

Of course, it really wasn't like that at all. The part time people didn't dislike Joe or Mike, they didn't always dislike their jobs, and there was no supernatural reason for their departures. They simply had their own lives and their own concerns. There was no connection among them that anybody was aware of, and yet there had been something subtly wrong about each and every one of them. Mike didn't think too much about it. It was just bad luck as far as he was concerned, bad luck that just went on too long. Joe, on the other hand, was more disturbed by the trend.

Joe took the application back with him and went directly to the office, closing the door behind him. He sat down at his desk, and looked over it. The name on the application was David C. Melenik. He was twenty-four years old. He lived on NW 7th Street. He had gone to elementary school, high school, college for a year. Then he had worked in retail, a shoe store for a year, and several other jobs in quick succession afterwards, none lasting for more than seven months. It was not a good sign. He listed no hobbies and no special interests. He had no references. There was no one to contact in case of an emergency. Under the health and related problems that we ought to know about section, he'd written, "There's a man who follows me around and ruins everything I do." And that was all the information on the form.

"Great!" Joe exclaimed and tossed the application back into his inbox. Why don't we ever get a normal person, just a normal human being who needs a job? Why are they always strange? His immediate decision was to trash the application and wait to see what else turned up. But nothing did, and he had to work both Thursday night and Saturday all day, and he hated every minute that he had to be out there, serving customers.

I'm just not cut out for this, he repeated to himself every time a new customer walked in, and by repetition convinced himself that it was true. It's not that I don't like them, Joe decided, it's just that I don't like it when we're in these weird relations. I like people when I'm with them on an equal basis, just people, one on one, and it is never that way on the sales floor.

Joe never understood how his brother, as well as his father, had managed to enjoy living out there on the sales floor so much. They seemed to get along just fine with everyone they dealt with. There was never any arrogance or condescension between them and their customers. They treated every customer equally, and every customer left the store satisfied. I just don't have the knack for it, Joe thought. He felt stupid whenever he was out there on the floor, as if he was just doing it all wrong, as if he'd never learn. And so he avoided contact with the customers. He kept to the back, in the office, and did the work that needed to be done back there.

By Monday morning, DeBarrie's hadn’t yet received another application. Joe couldn’t face another long work-week full of customers. He called up David Melenik and made an appointment to see him later that afternoon. He didn't tell Mike about it. Mike didn't bother about that stuff. He let Joe take care of the hiring. Mike just did his best to get along with the part-timers.

With family and friends Joe’s communication skills were okay. He was mostly calm, mostly quiet, but comfortable and easy. Strangers made him nervous, and whenever he got nervous he got strange ideas running through his head. He would ask the strangest questions, and the interviews quickly turned weird. Interviews never failed to bring on his nervousness, there was just something about the whole setup. He would feel forced to ask questions and his questions were never of the standard interview kind.

The office intercom buzzed. It was Gwen. “There's a guy named David Melenik here. He says you're supposed to talk to him.”

“It's okay, send him back.” said Joe.

Joe stood up and paced while waiting for the applicant to reach the office door and knock. He kept clenching and unclenching his hands. The knock came soon enough. And Joe let David in, then asked him to sit down in the large swivel chair. Joe sat down, behind his desk, and picked up David's application. He pretended to read it, but he was actually trying to think of what to say. He never knew how to begin these interviews. He considered a lot of openings, but none of them seemed right. Finally he just blurted out,

“What is all this here about a man who follows you around? What does all that mean?”

It was a mistake, David thought, I should never have come in here. But he was there and he'd just been asked a question, so he had to let it go on, or else get up and run away. But he told himself I will not run away. I'm not running anymore.

“It's like it says.” David said. “He tracks me everywhere I go. I can't get rid of him.”

“Who is he?” Joe inquired.

“I don't know who he is.” David said.

“Why is he following you?” Joe looked puzzled.

“I don't know.” David said. “I think that he just picked me out of a crowd one day, but I don't really know.” David could not look up. His eyes were focused on his shoes, the laces were a little loose. He felt he couldn't go through with this, not again. They never understand, he thought. I don't blame them, really. How could they know what it's like?

“When did all this start?” Joe asked.

“About three years ago.”

Joe studied the application for a moment,

“When you were at the shoe store?” he asked.

“Yes.”David said, without looking up from his shoes, “He ruined that for me.”

“How? What did he do?”

David shrugged. “Everything went bad.” he quietly said, “I couldn't stay there anymore, he ruined it. He ruins everything I do.”

“Who is he?” Joe pressed on.

“I don't know.” David said, “I don't think I've ever seen him. Well, I might have, I might have seen him but I can't be sure that it was him. He changes. And he's different every time.”

Joe was nervous behind the desk, a few drops of sweat formed under his arm and slid down to his waist. He didn't know what to say. I don't want to be here, Joe thought. It's all wrong, it's all going wrong. How do I get out of this? But all he could say was, “I don't understand.”