16. Part-Time Job III
[Albert's flashback begins]
An alarm rang out in the pitch darkness. The sound was small but rigidly pushed through its duty, and even past 5 minutes, it continued crying pitifully as if the device would break, desperately seeking the touch of its master's hand to let it rest. But the three men who had let go of consciousness and fallen into deep sleep could hardly think of waking up, enough to make the cry in the silence meaningless. This was understandable, as the time they had set was 4 AM—when the sun hadn't even risen yet, full of eerie cold air. It was a difficult time for three men in the prime of their vigor to wake up.
The man who barely recognized the alarm sound lifted his heavy body and barely calmed the clock. Having returned from the distant world of unconsciousness to face reality, it seemed like his life was being shaved away in this early dawn before the sun had even risen. His severed consciousness connected along synapses, reminding him of the work they had to do early this morning. He let out a long sigh, sad that he couldn't sleep more because of work. Next to him, two men slept obliviously, showing no signs of waking. The man couldn't sense any sense of responsibility or pressure from them. He just shook his head as if pathetic, watching them sleep so carefree.
The cold air of early dawn made eyes bloodshot. After parking the car in front of the warehouse, while one of the three went to wake the employee sleeping in the night duty room, the two sat blankly listening to sounds flowing from the radio. If the phone of salvation rang even now saying today's work was cancelled, they felt they could immediately return to their lodgings and bury themselves in blankets.
They seemed to have lost their souls from repeated night work and early arrivals for days. They tried to count how many hours a day they slept but fell asleep in the process. They thought they had worked hard enough to fill the work volume to the point of being tight, but when approaching the end of work, time was always insufficient. It would be nice if the original contractor set the construction period generously when making the construction contract so they could go on vacation, get some fresh air, and sleep enough, but such companies had never existed so far (and never would). Always, in all contracts, the first priority was money, not people. The second priority was time. Labor intensity probably wouldn't be considered even after all conditions were satisfied. Because that's what contracts were anyway.
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Another crushing accident occurred on Line 4. A worker trying to avoid a cart got caught on materials on the floor, and one leg couldn't get out in time and got caught. According to a nearby worker, fortunately he saved his life, but his leg bone seemed to be broken.
The atmosphere wasn't good in months when safety accidents occurred. Headquarters urged the safety monitoring team to pressure workers more severely, and subcontractor employees had more points of criticism while working, delaying delivery. This time, guidelines came down not to leave work materials on site, so they cleared materials that had been piled up for more than two days and employees carried only half a day's work materials morning and afternoon. Conflicts arose with the monitoring team over things like work orders not being attached to cloud ladders, work continued to be delayed, and volume kept piling up. Overtime continued to meet the deadline, and they gradually became silent.
While the tray was going up on an air lift to install a cable duct at 5 meters height, on the opposite side Albert was on a lift preparing for hanger work. Whether the left and right weight balance was particularly off that day, it swayed the entire time the tray went up.
Right next to him, Thick Lips was moving a hoist for the next tray. When it had almost reached the target point, the tray began to slowly tilt toward Thick Lips, and when the air lift stopped, the tray lost its center of gravity and slid terrifyingly toward him. Everyone around made sounds like 'uh... uh...', and when Thick Lips looked to the side, he saw a long square steel mass charging toward him terrifyingly like a train.
Making a tremendous metal sound, the tray smashed to the floor and Thick Lips also fell. Albert was startled, jumped straight down from the lift, and headed to where his colleague had fallen. Unlike the noisy metal sound, fortunately Thick Lips wasn't crushed by the tray. He slowly opened his eyes that had been frowning while breathing heavily as if surprised. In his line of sight, he saw the face of his colleague with eyes wide open, frightened by the just-occurred accident.
"Ah... fuck..."
A curse automatically popped from his mouth. It wasn't resentment or cursing anyone, but just anger about such a shitty situation. And thinking that he could be hurt or die absurdly in such a ridiculous situation, he no longer wanted to work.
[Albert's flashback ends]