Afternoon Fiction: Kjerstin Johnson, “Employee Discount”

You smooth your new slacks. The tag says “Express,” but you bought them at TJ Maxx, the one just across from the Barnes & Noble, at the Kirkland mall. You are not allowed to wear jeans at Barnes & Noble, or sneakers, or logos of any sort. This is in the “Welcome to Our Team” employee handbook you received last week. You raise your head when Daniel, the store manager, begins to read over the numbers from yesterday. This is your first morning staff meeting and you do not know what these numbers mean. Some are big, like 27,000. Others are small, like 3.022 percent. The other employees nod or offer commentary. A girl with green dreadlocks in an apron reads the café’s numbers. She promises to upsell better today. The Music and DVDs manager reads his numbers without looking up, even though he is not reading off of anything. You like him because he is the Music and DVDs manager. You like him because he looks as uncomfortable as you even though he’s not new.

If you need 15 minutes of entertaining fiction in the near future, Kjerstin Johnson’s short story “Employee Discount” (winner of the Doug Fir Fiction Award, judged by Canadian-American writer Rivka Galchen) is available in full on UTNE.

(Thanks, Martha!)