Chapter 08 · 3 min 32 sec
The Foreman Is Also Tired
Recognition — looking back and seeing the love that was always present, just unnamed.
Lyrics· 261 words
[Verse 1] I saw him in the parking lot at six AM Sitting in his car not going anywhere, just sitting then The man who wrote me up for being four minutes slow Had his head against the wheel like he had nowhere to go
[Verse 2] They gave him a tablet that scores him on our scores If we're slow, he's slower, that's just how the numbers pour Upward, always upward, to a name we'll never see He's the floor between the machine and me
[Chorus] The foreman is also tired, the foreman also bleeds He's just a closer ring around the same machine that feeds On all of us together, on all of our wasted nights The foreman is also tired underneath the fluorescent lights
[Verse 3] I brought him coffee once, didn't say a word He looked at me like kindness was a language he'd not heard In that building, in that role, in that particular chair We didn't talk about it. We just let the silence share
[Chorus] The foreman is also tired, the foreman also bleeds He's just a closer ring around the same machine that feeds On all of us together, on all of our wasted nights The foreman is also tired underneath the fluorescent lights
[Bridge - quiet, almost a confession] I used to think the enemy wore a badge with a different name Now I think the enemy doesn't wear a face at all, no shame It just wears whoever's standing closest to the gate The foreman's standing closer. That's his only fate
Short Story
*A story for curious minds*
A young dishwasher named Cleo worked the closing shift at a diner where the manager, a stern, exacting man named Burroughs, wrote her up twice in one month for clocking in a few minutes late.
Cleo had decided, privately, that Burroughs was simply a difficult man, the kind who enjoyed making other people's nights harder, and she carried this opinion around like a smooth stone in her pocket — comforting in its simplicity, easy to hold onto.
One frigid morning, leaving after a long shift, she crossed the empty parking lot and noticed Burroughs's car still there, engine off, lights off, the man himself sitting motionless behind the wheel with his forehead resting against it.
She almost kept walking. It would have been easy to. But something made her tap gently on the window instead.
He startled, then rolled it down, looking embarrassed in a way she'd never seen on him.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Corporate wants the new numbers by six," he said, rubbing his eyes. "I haven't been home in two days. My own manager calls every hour asking why my section's labor costs are point-three percent over target." He laughed, a short, joyless sound. "Point-three percent. I used to want to open my own place someday. Now I just want six hours of sleep that nobody calls during."
Cleo didn't know what to say, so she didn't say anything clever. She just stood there in the cold for a moment, then said, "There's coffee inside if you want it. I can make a pot before I lock up."
He looked at her like she'd offered him something far larger than coffee.
They didn't become friends, exactly. Burroughs still wrote up tardiness, still pushed the numbers he was pushed to push. But after that morning, Cleo noticed something she hadn't let herself notice before — the particular exhaustion in how he rubbed his temple before reading the schedule aloud, the way his shoulders dropped half an inch when the dinner rush finally cleared.
She still didn't love the write-ups. She still thought, some nights, that he could be kinder. But she stopped imagining him as the source of the weather and started seeing him as someone standing in it too, a few feet closer to the part of the sky that rained the hardest.
She never brought up that morning in the parking lot again, and neither did he. But every so often, on a particularly brutal night, she'd notice an extra coffee already poured and waiting by the register, no note, no explanation needed.
More From This Album
