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This was it, there was only moving up from here.
His next pay would not only show his new promotion, but this was the last one showing the garnish on his wages from his tax troubles for the past five years.
It was time to start saving for something great.
Gustav had not been on a trip in years and his phone was way out of date. He had said no to nearly every outing with friends due to his lack of cash. This promotion could not be coming at a better time.
It was time to retire “BORINGGUS” and bring back “FUNGUS”.
Payday. First stop: the grocery store. No more instant ramen.
He surveyed his cart as he rolled up to the cash. Chicken, ribs, TWO ply toilet paper, but it was the tube of Crest that made him smile the most. No more no-name toothpaste.
He was a brand man again.
It only took two weeks for Gus to learn why he was getting paid so much more. Management was hard.
Kim kept miswiring the Doberman and Lana’s Akita kept repeating the same bark. He hadn’t seen how poorly they did their jobs when he had been working next to them.
“You have to balance the inputs, like this,” Gus told Lana, opening up the back of her Akita and moving his fingers up and down the dial until the go light turned green. They sat back and waited and the dog barked, unevenly, with no rhythm or pattern. Perfectly.
Balance, he thought as the dog barked. When would he find his?
MechPets was busier than ever and now he had more things to do, people to look after, more meetings, more responsibility. When would he get to take that vacation? When could FUNGUS come out again?
Repair calls were coming in fast, sixty a day. A piece of the new code was buggy. With each call that came, the more work Gus had, everyone else opting to diffuse their own responsibility and defer to him every time. He worked late, ate little, slept even less.
Gus sat in his car in the parking lot and cried. It was all too much and not at all what he thought it would be. In that moment he decided to quite MechPets.
He wanted to engage in a simpler life again.
Even if that meant switching back to no-name toothpaste.
Written daily using the #vss365 word prompts on twitter, compiled weekly into a story of exactly 400 words.
#garnish #fungus #crest #Akita #balance #diffuse #engage
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