-by Tilka Materna

She tiptoed towards the darkened room. She could hear the machines running, surely someone must be operating them. The more her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the more movement she could see; bodies hunched over machines, clicking away, intently working. The night shift. Day shift and night shift never met. The day shifters, herself included, always thought this was to keep the order, to make sure that the day shifters didn’t find out the wages of the night shifters. The day shifters theorised that the night shifter’s wages must be at least 200% more than what they were making, but nobody had any contact with those who worked at night so this could never be confirmed.

Her boss had just sent out another ominous communication yesterday that no day shifters are allowed on company grounds when the clock strikes 5 pm. Day and night shift working times changed depending on the time of year. In winters, the night shift would last from 4 pm to 4 am, meaning that day shifters would work from 7 am until 3 pm. This left plenty of free time, which was usually filled by a part-time job since the wages were not the best to begin with. Then in the summers, the day shifters were expected to work from 5 am until 5 pm which would be physically and mentally taxing, but at least there would be a bit more money to spend.

Yes, the hours were long and exhausting and there wasn’t a lot of spare time or energy for much of a life afterwards, but management did allow pizza parties once a month, and who doesn’t like pizza? Additionally, the work was for a good cause so nobody would mind putting in the extra hours. They were activists, after all!

“What important work you are doing! You’re saving lives and future generations!” Her friends and family would exalt as she explained her job.

It made her heady to hear this from her father, whose opinion she cared about the most, and it also felt good to tell people what she did. It was easy to start conversations at social events because all she had to ask was “What do you do?” which she could swiftly answer on her own with a long monologue about her life as a paid activist.

At some point, the job became her identity. It no longer was just a job, but who she was. There was no time in her life to think about anything else but her job. Vacations and holidays were essentially pointless because even if she was at her most relaxed, there was always that nagging thought in the back of her mind about a report that needed publishing or an event that needed to be organized. As soon as she felt the slightest glimmer of doubt about her position, she would extinguish it. After working so many years in previous non-profit organisations that had treated her even worse (the full-time internship that paid €400 per month came to mind) she could not imagine leaving such a prestigious organisation as the current one.

Yes, this is what she was working her entire life towards. From an early age, she had fostered an interest in human rights and politics. This led her to join Student Government in both college and university where she excelled, even becoming president of her class for a year. She wrote about human rights issues during her time as a student journalist and she never missed a protest being held in her city. She was told so many times that this work wouldn’t make her prosperous and, well, they were right, but at least she was supporting the cause and she was not yet impoverished. In fact, she had a little apartment with a little dog, whom she posted quite often on her Instagram stories. She didn’t spend enough time with her dog or in her apartment, but at least she knew she had achieved a childhood dream of hers by having both.

She was ecstatic when she was offered this job. Finally, a position that completely aligned with her values as a human rights protector. Her years of unpaid work had finally been compensated. At last, the emptiness, the gaping vacuum, that she would feel at the centre of her chest most nights before dozing off to sleep, would be filled. A rewarding job! What more could she want?

She had obtained all miniscule raises that she could in her position…or were those just the legally necessary inflation adjustments to her wage? Either way, she had just applied for a management position where she would be finally working during the night shift. The last person who got a promotion like this was her desk mate, Ruby, who was promoted about 6 months ago. Since then, nobody had heard anything from her, but that was a given considering that the work at night was even more intense.

So why was she doing something that was strictly forbidden by management? Quite simply, she had fallen asleep on the toilet at the end of the day and now she was creeping through the darkened hallways of her office building toward the exit. She had to pass a glass-walled room that she knew was filled with night shift workers and she had no idea how to walk past without anyone noticing. She bit her lip, considering crawling on all fours across the carpeted floors to avoid the night shift’s gaze.

Then, suddenly, the clicking of the machines intensified and at that moment her eyes had so completely adjusted to the darkness that she could see what the night shift was. She gasped when she recognized Ruby; gaunt, her skin colourless and hanging from her cheeks, almost all her shiny, long black hair had fallen out and was barely covering her bald head, deep dark circles below her hollowed-out eyes. She was murmuring to herself as she was operating the machine, highly concentrated yet at the same time eyelids falling shut every couple of seconds. She was clearly exhausted beyond repair and when Ruby’s head finally hit the keys of the machine that she was operating, she stopped moving. Her ribcage seemed to struggle to expand once, twice and then there was no movement anymore. She could tell that Ruby was gone, that her soul had suddenly gone and that there was only an empty husk remaining. Ruby’s desk mates, to her left and right, stared at her as she was taking her last trembling breaths, listened to the death rattle out of her exhausted lungs. When she was gone, they each grabbed an arm of hers and slowly dragged her body across the carpeted floor to another room. They were weak too. In fact, all the night shift looked like Ruby; emaciated, pale, lifeless forms whose backs seemed permanently deformed by the work of constantly hunching over.

“You are one of them now,” she heard a voice saying. It was Lucille, the boss of the organisation. She had suddenly appeared behind her and could see Lucille’s reflection in the glass window. Then she saw herself, truly saw herself, for the first time and recognized that she too had become one of them. Her hair had thinned significantly over the years and most of it had fallen out. Her posture was hunched over. It must have happened slowly over time. She was ready to give her life up for it, for the good of humanity, for the exalted opinion of her family and friends.

“You’re ready.” Lucille said, smiling a large bleach-toothed grin, looking more carnivorous with every second, her bright red lipstick resembling blood. “Go on. Join them.”

She sat down at an empty desk and hunched over the machine feeling a smile spread across her cheeks. It felt good to work there. It was almost like her body had evolved to work this job. She certainly wouldn’t end up like Ruby, she thought to herself, she knew how to establish boundaries with management after all. She was different.

And so the machine began to gently click, lulling her into the rhythm that she would feel until she would one day die from exhaustion, only to be replaced by the next eager employee.

CAPITALISM MAKES MONSTERS OF US ALL