Ghost Story

Art by @ghosts.semiweekly

"It all started when he said to me 'if you have time to lean, you have time to clean'. I was mighty tired that day, having spend the last few days overworked and having covered two other workers who called out. Like everywhere, it seems management has decided running a store on a skeleton crew is entirely acceptable. Workers, to them, are just cogs-"

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"I thought you were going to tell us a ghost story."

"I am telling you a ghost story."

"Is the only spooky thing going to be the crew of skeletons at your work?"

"No - that's a figure of speech. 'Skeleton Crew.' It just means there are barely enough people to keep things operating. No coverage if someone is sick or injured, no time to cross train for redundancy, and it always leads to the best staff leaving because they can find better places to work that might treat them with dignity. Of course, if your only goal is to extract wealth and increase human misery, it doesn't matter if-"

"Dad?"

"What is it this time?"

"You were telling us a story."

"Oh, right. 'Time to lean is time to clean', right? Well, that was the last straw for me. I told him if he had enough time to bitch about me running the whole store he had enough time to hire another half-dozen staff. He got all 'nobody wants to-'"

"Dad? Is this a work story?"

"Yes, eat your marshmallow. Anyhow, I told him to lead by example and do five minutes of real work around the place. Then I coughed a couple times, told him I'm feeling sick, and now we're out on this beautiful night roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories."

"Dad, that wasn't a ghost story."

"Kid, we're ghosts. Any story I tell is a ghost story."