Free The Part Time People by Tom Lichtenberg, Benhamish Allen Page A

interest or the aptitude for sales. He had resented having to work in the store when he was younger, unlike Mike who loved coming to DeBarrie's with their father. Not wanting to work at DeBarrie's was the main reason Joe left home as soon as he was old enough. He'd gone off to college intending to become a teacher. He even got his teaching degree. A few months in front of classrooms full of students, all expecting so much from him and it was over. He couldn’t take the pressure. He wasn't cut out for it, he'd told himself. A teacher couldn't be invisible or quiet. So he came home, and went to work in the store.
     
    Mike didn't resent his return at all. In fact he was happy that Joe was there to do the necessary office work. Mike had the sales floor to himself. He was the master of the world out there. And he was very good at it.
     
    Mike and Joe both felt, and often said to one another, that if they could find the perfect part time person, it would put to rest the only problem that they had. And it was ridiculous that such a little thing could go on and mar their happiness month after month, year after year.
     
    Every time Joe lost another part time person he went through this same cycle of reasoning, and every time his decision turned out the same. They would have to hire another one.
     
    Later that day, Joe came out from hiding in his office, rushing past the customers so they wouldn't have a chance to stop him and ask him questions. At the front he gathered the morning's harvest of applications. There was only one.
     
    "How's business?" he asked Gwen.
     
    "Pretty slow today," she said. Joe didn't mind. He knew the store was in good shape. They had a good lease, steady customers, and no competition for miles in any direction. It was an easy life, too easy, he often thought.
     
    Years ago, the part time problem was considered to be just a bit of bad luck. But over time, DeBarrie's had gone through many part-timers and the problem had assumed an absurd dimension. It became thought of as the family curse. Every time they lost another part-timer it meant extra shifts, cancelled plans, interrupted weekends. The part time people always left or just disappeared at the most inconvenient times, as if deliberately trying to upset their quiet and routine lives.
     
    Of course, it really wasn't like that at all. The part time people didn't dislike Joe or Mike, they didn't always dislike their jobs, and there was no supernatural reason for their departures. They simply had their own lives and their own concerns. There was no connection among them that anybody was aware of, and yet there had been something subtly wrong about each and every one of them. Mike didn't think too much about it. It was just bad luck as far as he was concerned, bad luck that just went on too long. Joe, on the other hand, was more disturbed by the trend.
     
    Joe took the application back with him and went directly to the office, closing the door behind him. He sat down at his desk, and looked over it. The name on the application was David C. Melenik. He was twenty-four years old. He lived on NW 7th Street. He had gone to elementary school, high school, college for a year. Then he had worked in retail, a shoe store for a year, and several other jobs in quick succession afterwards, none lasting for more than seven months. It was not a good sign. He listed no hobbies and no special interests. He had no references. There was no one to contact in case of an emergency. Under the health and related problems that we ought to know about section, he'd written, "There's a man who follows me around and ruins everything I do." And that was all the information on the form.
     
    "Great!" Joe exclaimed and tossed the application back into his inbox. Why don't we ever get a normal person, just a normal human being who needs a job? Why are they always strange? His immediate decision was to trash the application and wait to see what else turned up. But nothing did, and he