My Night Shift Partner Is A Ghost Hunter Who Refuses To Work
The hum of the warehouse at 3:00 AM is a sound that burrows deep into your skull. It is an endless, vibrating thrum created by massive exhaust fans and the cooling systems of giant sorting machines, all fighting against the stagnant, stale air of the facility. For most people, this is the witching hour of the night shift. It is the time when the fatigue truly sets in, when the lukewarm coffee from the breakroom vending machine tastes like burnt sludge, and every muscle in your body screams for a horizontal surface. But for me, this isn't just the time when my body aches; it is the hour of pure, unfiltered craziness. My partner, Gary, has checked out of reality. He does not care about packing crates, scanning barcodes, or meeting the nightly quota. Gary has decided that he is a professional ghost hunter, and he treats our workplace like his own personal paranormal investigation site. Every single night, as soon as the clock on the supervisor’s wall hits 3:00 AM, Gary drops whatever he is doing. It does not matter if we are in the middle of a rush or if the pallets are stacked to the ceiling. He pulls out this cheap, plastic handheld device that he bought online—something that looks like a toy from a children's science kit—and he calls it his ghost detector. The first time he did it, I was genuinely concerned. I thought he was having a stroke or perhaps trying to calibrate some new equipment I hadn't seen before. I hovered near him, ready to call for medical assistance. I soon realized, however, that he was just testing my patience in the most bizarre way possible. As I pull heavy crates of auto parts across the slick, concrete floor, my back throbs with a dull, persistent pain and my work boots slide on the polished dust. Meanwhile, Gary walks through the narrow aisles, waving his plastic gadget in the air like he is searching for a radio signal, muttering to himself in a low, frantic tone. Hey Gary, can you help me with this heavy pallet? I asked recently. My voice sounded thin and desperate, echoing off the towering steel shelves that seemed to stretch into the darkness of the high ceiling. He spun around so fast he nearly dropped his device. His eyes were wide, darting toward the rafters, and he slammed a finger against his lips. Shhh! he whispered, his face pale under the harsh fluorescent lights. Do you hear that? It is tapping. The roof, right above the loading dock. It is trying to talk to me. I stood there, holding the weight of a half-ton pallet in my arms, my lower back threatening to give out. I stared at him, my jaw tight. There is no tapping, Gary, I said, trying to keep my voice level and calm. It is just the building cooling down. It is the metal expanding and the concrete settling after a long day of heat. It is just a normal, industrial warehouse. He ignored me completely, leaning his head against a metal support beam as if he were listening to a symphony. He even taped a piece of crinkled aluminum foil to the front of his neon safety vest, claiming it acted as a sensor for spectral shifts. It was utterly ridiculous. I ended up moving the pallet into the wrapping machine by myself, grunting with every push. When I finished, drenched in sweat and feeling like my spine was going to snap, Gary was still hiding in a dark corner of aisle six, whispering soft apologies to a dusty shelf. This has been happening for months now. I have gone to our boss three separate times. Each time, the boss just stares blankly at his computer screen, clicking away at a mouse while barely acknowledging I exist. I tell him that I am doing the work of two men while Gary runs around looking for ghosts, and all the boss does is pull up a graph. We hit our goals, he says, not even turning his head to look at me. As long as the orders go out on time, he does not care who does the work or what they do while they are doing it. It is a nightmare. Management only cares about the final numbers on a spreadsheet, so they keep paying Gary to act like a delusional ghost hunter while I literally wear myself out. It feels like a bad joke, and my body is paying the price. Sometimes I wonder if Gary actually knows how much he is making my life miserable. Does he genuinely believe there are spirits haunting the loading docks, or is he just the most committed slacker in the history of the night shift? I tried to have a real talk with him during our lunch break. We were sitting on plastic chairs in the breakroom, surrounded by the smell of floor wax and old microwave popcorn. Gary, this cannot go on, I told him. You are scaring the new people and making me despise being here. He just gave me this weird, slow smile. The dead are just as tired as we are, he whispered, looking into his lukewarm coffee. They just show it differently. It sent a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the warehouse air conditioning. Sometimes, when the warehouse is deathly quiet and the lights flicker in the long rows of empty storage, I almost start to wonder if something is really there. I catch shadows moving in the corner of my eye, or I hear a sound that seems too rhythmic to be just the building settling. But then I see a massive pile of parts that needs to be packed, and I am pulled back to reality. I am here to earn a paycheck and keep my life together, not to hunt ghosts. Yet, every single night at 3:00 AM, the cycle repeats. He pulls out his plastic detector, he starts his frantic whispering, and I end up doing all the heavy lifting. I do not know how much longer I can keep this up. My back is failing, my frustration is peaking, but as long as the boss sees those green numbers on his computer screen, I am stuck in the dark with a man who thinks he has a ghost for a coworker.