"I don't know why they keep sending these back to us alla time, Joe. They ain't gonna get any better no matter how many times we patch 'em up.", Keenan said, tossing another suit set into the scrap bin.
His partner, Yuen-Si Sueh, who everyone called Joe, shrugged slightly and got back to work inserting an arm. Lately the brass had been asking for larger shoulders to imply trustworthiness, so a backlog had sprung up.
Keenan went on. "I mean, you'd think someone out there would cotton to the fact that their supervisors keep coming back different from these "seminars", yuh know? I mean, if old Ratnick came back after a week off the floor and looked all shiny and pinned up wouldn't you notice, Joe? I mean, come on!" Keenan stepped back from the production line and wiped his forehead with an oily, stiff rag.
Yuen-Si made a clicking sound of understanding between his teeth and reached up on the shelf for a hammer.
"You get heads, I do legs and feet next, okay?" Joe asked.
"Okay, sure, fine, can do, boss." Keenan said, jovially poking Yuen-Si in the back.
Joe pulled the lever next to his station and an elevated chute emptied its contents loudly onto the conveyor in front of them. Keenan and Joe picked through the oxford shirts and dented faces, separating the sexes into two canvas bins between them. Bright-eyed blonde HR models and lantern-jawed male manager models gazed up blankly at them from the bottom of the rapidly-filling carts.
"Hey, I think I worked for this guy once, a coupla years back!" Keenan said, pulling up a tousled and confident-looking head from his pile. Yuen-Si just hmm'ed - it was Keenan's favorite joke. He used to put the heads on broomsticks and leave them out in the hall in kissing poses or done up like scarecrows until someone from Corporate told him to knock it off. Yuen-Si liked Keenan enough - he made the day go by faster.
When the parts were completely sorted, Keenan and Joe began arranging them on the conveyor to check for major repairs. Most were in okay shape, their basic vocab features would need upgrading, of course. Keenan kept a Jargon List close at hand and ran the models through it twice a week before final sign off. This was where he felt most useful - years back there had been trouble when they had used contracted help on the line. Reports had come back of sudden bursts of profanity and other inappropriate communication.
The whistle blew. Keenan and Joe washed their hands and left for lunch. The afternoon shift would have a lot of minute work to be done - Body Language installs, Empathy work - that kind of stuff. Tricky wiring jobs. Keenan rubbed his wrists in painful anticipation. He'd been on the line for nearly 20 years, had started back when the models were the old pinstripe-and-cigar types - the easy ones. Now it was all Jargon Lists and convoluted cheeriness implant work. Putting a human face on everything that came outta the chute. And they kept coming back, what's worse. It was getting so bad that Keenan kept seeing the same serial numbers back on the line no matter what he and Joe could come up with.
Still, it was steady enough, and Joe was a good kid. His entire family worked at the Barn in different areas, and they always made room for Keenan on the lunch bench. Good noodles even if he couldn't understand a damn thing they said to each other. "Like family," he thought, "yeah, one big happy family.."
