Mouse Ishii smiled at the sound of the glasses being pushed along the wash rack at the Monorail Pub.
He found it musical, soothing, the antithesis of the bellows on the 722 packout line.
All day, six days a week, he heard the call “Rack In” when the third component of the 722 came together at the junction of the line that was his job.
It was Kenji Ishii’s first year on the job when he quietly suggested to the foreman that if they equipped each workstation with a mouse rather than manually punching in the code on a keyboard, they could improve production speed.
Twenty four years in and he was jammed up at second shift production lead, never going to go any higher.
He sipped his Corona, thought about a shot, listened to the glasses chiming and clinking, the swoosh of the manual glass washer.
The Monorail had karaoke until Burnham Township decided to charge an extra entertainment license.
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