New Days, Hard Labor
A few days later, after all the humiliation and hardship, my health certificate finally came through. I took it with me and set out for my first day of work. After months of stacked misfortune that had left me able to do nothing at all, it felt like I was finally taking the first step toward a comeback—and that felt good. That feeling turned into regret within fifteen minutes of clocking in.
"The dairy section's completely out of milk. Grab the hand truck and go restock it."
"Sorry? Uh… where am I supposed to get it from?"
"The delivery just came in! Everybody move! Move! Hey, new girl—stop dawdling over there and get going!"
"Huh? Y-yes, yes yes…"
"That'll be 54,960 won altogether. How would you like to pay?"
"Zero Pay, please."
"Sorry? Ah… Senior? Excuse me, but how do I process a Zero Pay payment?"
It was brutal. And I got chewed out constantly.
"What, I have to walk you through every little thing? Just follow the signs and you'll find it!"
"No—the guys handle the pallets. You women take what they lower down by hand! Stop hanging around here and get over there!"
"Ugh, seriously! Can't you see how slammed we are at the POS?!"
Nobody taught me a single thing. They just threw me straight into the fray—more like dumped me there, really. Everything was brand-new to me; I had no idea what was what, and I was so overwhelmed I could barely keep up. On top of that, the physical intensity was staggering.
That was when I learned it for the first time: a box of glass noodles that looked light enough could crush a person flat when it came down off a shelf. Work at a supermarket that I'd thought of as no big deal turned out to be crushing manual labor—nothing easy about it. I regretted how casually I'd always taken for granted the things that made everyday life run.
And for the first time, I felt a flicker of gratitude toward my father. However he'd treated me like a cast-off child, he'd still put me through university without a single part-time job and without tuition worries, and he'd raised me until I landed a comfortable office job and moved out on my own. Thinking of that as his own kind of care for his child made my eyes sting a little.
Yeah. Looking back, I hadn't really lived through any great hardship. Working overtime of my own accord at the office after getting married, just so I wouldn't disappoint my fairly successful banker wife—that had been the full extent of my struggles. Was that enough that people could fairly call me someone who'd coasted through life and I wouldn't have a word to say back?
From day one at the job I'd scraped together, getting shoved around and drained by hard labor left me once again mocking my own incompetence and patheticness—and that made me uneasy.
And when the work itself was that exhausting, at least meeting decent people and getting along with them might have made things a little better. Even that turned out not to be easy. I found that out by accident during a ten-minute break after finishing a POS shift, on my way to the women's break room.
"What's with that new hire? She's tall enough, sure, but her body's so scrawny she can't even lift a couple boxes without swaying."
"Tell me about it. Ugh… even at the register she fumbles through the menus. Sitting next to her is going to give me an ulcer."
"Seriously, why'd the manager hire someone like that? I told him to pick a young one with experience even if she's a little rough around the edges—and he brings in some dried-up thing and turns our stomachs?"
"Don't even start. I was so dumbfounded I said something myself. Know what he told me?"
"What?"
"Said her eyes looked clear, like she wasn't the type to cause trouble. Ha! That's hilarious. Clear eyes? Really?"
I knew right away who the ladies working in the break room were muttering about. It was gossip about me. The details varied, but every single one of them was passionately denouncing how useless I was as a person.
And that included complaints about the manager for hiring me. I couldn't… I couldn't bring myself to walk into that atmosphere and rest. So I turned around, slipped into a narrow gap between the pallets stacked high at the loading dock, sat with my back against the boxes, and let out a long sigh.
Yeah. From the perspective of the ladies who'd been working here forever, I was definitely a scrawny, useless oddball. Watching women in their fifties with forearms twice the size of mine casually organize merchandise drove the difference home. Haah… what even was this?
Deep down, I'd thought that since I'd been a man until recently, even doing physical work here I'd be far better than the other women—able to keep up with the men. But once I was thrown onto the floor, my capacity was way below even the female staff working here.
Why were all the boxes so uniformly heavy? And if the product was something like drinks, I couldn't even think about lifting them. The carts and hand trucks I had to drag around were so heavy I was the one getting hauled along by them. Was I really this useless? I'd admit my coordination was lacking, but I didn't think my strength had ever been this far below standard. This had to be another change that came with the gender transition.
So what was I supposed to do now? This was a job I'd barely managed to land. If I was this much of a liability, should I just give up and quit? Or maybe the staff would tell me first that I was dead weight and ask me to leave. That couldn't happen. I couldn't keep burning through what little savings I had left while rotting in place.
While anxiety churned in my chest, the ten minutes somehow slipped by. Forcing down my reluctance, I headed back out onto the sales floor. That was when someone caught my wrist.
"Ah—Manager."
"There you are. Could I see you in the office for a minute?"
My breath caught for an instant. W-was this it? Had my prediction actually been right? Was he about to tell me I was unusable and ask me to leave? Trembling, I followed him into the office. The manager told me to take the chair beside his desk.
When I glanced up at his computer screen, some kind of HR-related document was open. The moment I saw it, a flood of thoughts raced through my head. This was it. He was going to ask me to quit. No. That really couldn't happen. What was I supposed to do?
It was only day one. Should I insist I could adapt quickly and cling to his pant leg if I had to? That was when I finally took a proper look at the manager. A middle-aged man who looked three or four years older than me—an ordinary office type.
A bit of a gut, a greasy face, the smell of cigarettes: the kind of run-of-the-mill manager you saw everywhere in places like this. The problem was that this man currently held the power of life and death over my livelihood. Which meant I might have to hang onto those jeans stained from work. A decision settled in my heart.
This wasn't the time for pride. I would have to get on my knees and beg if necessary—tell him I'd work hard, that I'd do anything. Those thoughts filled my head. And the moment he finally spoke after a long pause, the words burst out of me at the same time.
"Hyomin, can you handle documents by any chance—"
"I'll do anything. Whatever you tell me to do. Just please don't say I have to quit… Wait, what?"
I realized in that instant that I'd jumped the gun. I looked at the document the flustered manager had open on his screen. Huh? This was a work schedule template. Some of the formulas were tangled, with errors popping up all over. The manager stared at me with an incredulous face, then let out a short snort of laughter.
A moment later, the manager and I switched seats. After watching me clean up a few of the errors, he simply told me to go ahead and fix them properly and gave me his chair. So I sat in his seat and started on document work for the first time in a long while. It was simpler than I'd expected.
It wasn't even a well-built form—just a basic attendance sheet that needed to display leave days linked to the calendar. Crude, frankly. Compared to the work I used to do, this was far too easy. Relieved that the matter he'd meant to raise wasn't a suggestion that I resign, I threw myself into fixing the document.
It was a little uncomfortable, though. Sitting in a chair where the manager's work jacket—saturated with cigarette smoke—was hanging, every time I moved I caught a strong whiff of that stale middle-aged man smell. And somehow he kept drifting into a range that was hard to endure.
"Whoa. You're a pro. A real pro. You done this kind of work before? Nice. Fix this part too, would you?"
"Ah—yes. Got it."
Under the pretext of giving work instructions, the manager pointed at the screen while pressing in so close our cheeks nearly touched. What was this? Was this the kind of inappropriate behavior I'd only ever heard about? It felt incredibly awkward. Back when I was working, I'd never experienced anything like it—never even imagined doing it. But I wasn't in any position to complain.
Only moments earlier I'd been ready to get on my knees and beg. If he wasn't kicking me out and was looking favorably on what I was doing now, I needed to show him what I could do rather than fret over that. So the only thing I could do was finish as fast as possible.
"I'm done. Is there anything else you'd like fixed?"
"No, no. That's enough. Clean work. I knew I had a good eye for people. We never had anyone in the store who was any good at this stuff—now I can finally breathe a little easier. Thanks, Hyomin."
"Ah—no, not at all, Manager."
Only then could I stand up with relief. As I put distance between us, the manager smacked his lips a little as if disappointed and sat back down in his own seat. Then he looked at me and said,
"Starting tomorrow, rather than floor work, focus on assisting me in the office and handling admin tasks."
"Really? Is… is that okay?"
"Yeah. I'll tell the ladies at the morning meeting tomorrow. And that guy'll be back soon anyway, so the staffing crunch will ease up. So let's do it that way."
"Thank you, Manager. I'll work hard."
I bowed my head in gratitude, and as I did I snuck a sideways glance at the personnel file he'd left open. A man's resume was displayed there. For some reason the face in the photo looked… a little rough around the edges. The name: Lee Gangho. That was my first encounter with the person who would drastically change the course of my fate.