Ch 1 The Job
Mark entered the employee's entrance of the warehouse and punched in. He hung up his jacket and pulled on a pair of work gloves.
"Hey McCormick?" his boss asked, waving him over.
"Yeah Sid?"
"Ron just called out sick, can you drive a fork truck?"
Mark hesitated, he'd never actually driven a forklift of any kind, but, he hadn't gotten as far as he had due to a lack of risk taking.
"Sure," he said, even as it occurred to him that that type of strategy hadn't really helped him all that much in his past.
He followed Sid to the fork truck and climbed in, listening to the instructions of which pallets needed to be moved and to where, then started the engine and got to work.
The warehouse was a large one, and it was half full at the moment, with pallets full of identical boxes. All of them said "Waverly Water Filter System".
Mark was able to move the first two pallets perfectly, but on the third one his aim was off and both forks went right through the first boxes on the bottom of the pallet. He scrunched his face in mock pain as he quickly jumped out and glanced around self-consciously, before he walked to the forks and rearranged the boxes on the pallet so he could pull the damaged ones off of the forks.
He couldn't afford to lose this job, but if he admitted to destroying these water filters, he surely would. His first inclination was to hide the evidence in his locker until he could get rid of it. But, of course, Hardcastle's voice echoed inside his head, reminding him that he, Mark McCormick was an honest man.
It only took a moment to decide. He would hide the boxes until his break, and then decide what to do.