“I really need to quit this job.” Those were the words echoing in Shadow’s mind as he made his way to work at the untimely hour of 5am. He didn’t have an interesting job, that’s for sure. Currently, he was about to hit his four year mark working at the local wagon parts warehouse in Fillydelphia. It wasn’t his dream job but it paid the bills and that’s what mattered.
Eventually he reached the warehouse door and unlocked it with his keys. His boss, Wild Ace, was already inside, but for some reason had a habit of locking the door back after going inside. Annoying for sure, but after this long, Shadow was used to it.
After making his way inside the dimly lit warehouse, he trotted over to his computer and clocked himself into work.
“Another day another bit...I guess”. With that he picked up the paperwork his boss left on his desk every morning, a list of all the items ordered the previous day before grumbling, “Fuck, this is a large order. This is going to take me forever.”
Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue for him, but the scan gun that he normally used to speed up the process of checking off parts had been broken for quite some time and his boss still hadn’t ordered a replacement. So for now, he was reduced to checking everything off with a pen and paper.
Leaving his desk, he walked over to two large doors that opened up to reveal the receiving bay. With a sigh, he pulled one open and then the other. He entered the bay and stopped in front of a large cart. This is how the parts were delivered, all crammed into carts in such a way that the contents usually spilled out once the gate on the cart was opened. This was one of many gripes that he had with this job. One that unfortunately wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Double checking that he had his paperwork and a pen, he unlatched the door. To no one’s surprise, half of what was in the cart immediately spilled onto the floor. Shadow shook his head and stared at the mess on the floor.
“This is fucking great. I love this job.”
After mulling over if he should hoof in his resignation he started picking the items up off floor and began crossing them off of his paperwork. After a little over an hour he finally finished checking all of the parts in.
There was just enough time to take a deep breath and let it out slowly before walking over to the computer and telling it to print out invoices for restocking other parts. Like everything else here, it couldn’t possibly be that easy. The printer was up in the sales office, and he had to pass his boss’ office on the way. At least it let him say hi to his boss and see a familiar face.
“Hey there boss.”
Ace didn’t even acknowledge the greeting. He was too busy watching ponytube. It wasn’t even allowed to be used at work, but Ace had lost all of his fucks a long time ago. If anyone qualified as a lifer it would be him. He’d been at this job for 15 years and the only way he was leaving was if he got fired.
After realizing he wasn’t getting a reply, Shadow went ahead and retrieved the invoices from the printer and made his way back to the warehouse. About this time, one of his coworkers, an earth pony by the name Bulky Buster came through the warehouse door.
“Morning.” He said cheerily.
“Morning.” Shadow replied. Quickly turning his attention back to the orders he needed to fill. Buster really liked to talk about his marriage problems, and Shadow wasn’t about to indulge him at the current time. Luckily for him, Buster didn’t say more and trotted off toward the offices.
Pretty soon Shadow was done with filling the orders. That was the end of his morning responsibilities, and the mail pony wouldn’t show up for a few hours. Knowing this, he decided to relax at his desk and mess with his phone for a while. As soon as he sat down, another co worker trotted in. This time it was Swift Charge, the only Pegasus who worked at the warehouse.
Charge didn’t say anything or even acknowledge Shadow’s existence as he marched on by. This was perfectly fine with Shadow. He didn’t really like Charge, mostly because Charge would delegate most of his work onto other ponies. He also had a reputation for touting his sales numbers to everyone at all times.
“What a prick.” Shadow muttered under his breath. He waited for Charge to be out of sight before grabbing his phone and checking his email. “Just what I wanted. More spam emails from shitty porn sites.” Rolling his eyes he decided to open up Discourse and see if anything interesting was happening on any of the servers he was in.
Being that it was still rather early morning, the chats were all mostly dead. Only new things were some posts in the porn section to which he immediately clicked to. He was met with disappointment.
“Celestia’s flaming ass, how many times can people repost the same picture?” He said loudly, annoyed. The picture in question was a saucy looking mare presenting her mare parts to the camera. It was a good pic he’d admit, but it had started to lose its luster after seeing it for the tenth time.
Luckily a message notification popped up and hopefully would lead to a conversation to cleanse his boredom. He clicked on the notification and saw that it was his good friend Torch. He’d never met Torch in person but they still had a good friendship over the app. Torch was always there to brighten Shadow’s day with either some high quality porn or just some comforting words. Today though, porn was on the menu and it was good.
After checking to make sure his co workers were not around he decided to open up each photo and view them in their full glory. It was an entire set of a certain well known milf mare, Velvet Love. Each picture depicted her in all sorts of different poses. Ranging from a seductive look at the camera to flat out presenting her pussy. “Damn, this is fucking hot.” Shadow commented.
Suddenly the warehouse door opened and the mail pony entered. Startled, Shadow almost threw his phone across the warehouse. Fortunately she needed to make a second trip so Shadow took this time to lock his phone and put it away.
The mail pony entered for the second time, leaving the packages she was carrying on a nearby table along with the ones from the first trip. She walked over to Shadow’s desk to get his signature.
“Hello there. How are you today?” She asked.
Shadow hoped he didn’t look guilty. He felt like he had the word degenerate flashing on his forehead. “Oh, I’m great. How about you?” The words came out with a bit more gusto than he had planned. He might as well have shouted them.
The mail pony gave Shadow a concerned look and handed him the delivery slip so he could sign it. “Good day so far. No complaints yet anyways.” She responded.
Shadow nodded and handed her the signed slip. With that, the mail pony walked out of the warehouse, once again leaving Shadow alone
The silence was quickly broken though as a voice yelled from the direction of the offices. “Hey fuckface! Did you check in my parts yet?” That was the voice of Rapid Haze. An earth pony that had a knack for being late and asking stupid questions.
“The parts just got here, dick! Give me a fucking second!” Shadow yelled back. To anyone whose vocabulary isn’t that of a seasoned sailor, this conversation would sound rather insulting. Thing is, that’s just how everyone talks to each other around here. Though, it does make it easy to veil insults, which is nice.
Shadow got to work unboxing each part and receipting them. For any new worker the process would have taken quite long but Shadow had it done in about fifteen minutes. Once he was done, he made his way up front to the offices to give each of his coworkers their respective parts.
When he finally arrived at the offices, he noticed that they were all busy with phone calls so he just left the parts on their desks and made his way back to his own desk.
There was still about two hours before lunch time and he had nothing to do. Reaching his desk he decided to get his phone back out and talk to Torch for a awhile. They talked about the latest episode of My Little Human, sent each other some spicy mare pics they’d collected and their plans for the day. Eventually Torch had to go and Shadow was left with nothing to do. He put away his phone and stared at his computer screen. An hour still remained until lunch.
With boredom settling in again Shadow started to feel sleepy. His eyelids started to droop and he was having a hard time keeping his head up. He kept fighting it. Every few minutes he would jerk his head back up, but eventually sleep won and he fell into a deep slumber.
About an hour had passed when he finally woke up. He groggily checked the time and wondered how he had managed to be asleep for so long without anyone needing him. It was past noon, so he was free to go to lunch.
He clocked himself out, grabbed his phone and made his way up to the mostly unused second floor of the warehouse. This was where he always took his lunches. It was quiet and he wouldn’t be bothered here. Sometimes he would take a nap and sometimes he would chat on Discourse. Today was a chatting day.
Opening up the app on his phone he was thrilled to see plenty of activity on his favorite servers. He chatted with everyone for a while and then decided to watch an episode of My Little Human while he ate his lunch. Unfortunately, lunch passed quickly and soon enough it was time to get back to work.
He went back downstairs and clocked himself back into work. Throwing away his food remnants and putting his phone away in the process.
He noticed a pallet of lubricants had been dropped off while he was on lunch. He quickly double checked to make sure it was all there and began putting it on the appropriate shelf. He was done in no time at all.
As he walked back toward his desk, his work phone started ringing. It was Ace. He hit the button to put it on speaker. “Yes sir?” Shadow said expectantly.
“I need you in my office right now.” Ace said rather tensely.
“I’m on my way.” Shadow quickly responded and hung up the phone. He practically ran towards the offices. Upon reaching Ace’s office he waited outside to be called in.
“You can come in.” Ace said as he beckoned for Shadow to enter. Shadow took a seat in his office and waited.
“I know we are about to close, so don’t worry. This won’t take long. I just wanted to say that you’ve been a big help lately and I appreciate it. I mean, it’s hard to speak for everyone isn’t it?
Shadow was confused. “What do you mean?”
Ace sighed. “Go home Shadow.”
Shadow left Ace’s office feeling very confused. “Guess it’s just one of those days for him.” He lamented.
He gave a nod towards the very empty space that used to be his co workers offices and made his way back to his desk. Walking through the shambles of what remained of the warehouse after years of weathering to reach a desk that was more a breeding ground for roaches than a place to sit at. Once at his desk he clocked himself out on his computer that didn’t even have power. After grabbing his keys and his phone which hadn’t actually worked in quite some time he made his way to the door and went outside. He shut the door behind him and turned the key in the rusty lock. Turning away from the door he took a good look at the smokey wasteland before heading off to a bunker he called home.
As he trotted away you could hear him say. “Just a normal day at work is all. Same time tomorrow….”
Author's Note
I wrote this based off of my actual days at work. Obviously some things were changed and added to make it more interesting. If you made it to the end and didn't fall asleep then I congratulate you.