Bad People

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By the time we got home, the sun was already going down.

Besides the stroller with the kids in it, we had so much stuff that Cassandra and I had to go back and forth between the third floor and the lobby a few times.

"You worked so hard all day today, Cassandra."

"You worked hard too, Jun! Still, it feels good knowing we pulled something off."

"Yeah. Really."

Part of me wanted to invite her to stay for dinner, but she had a kid waiting for her at home. She would want to get back as soon as she could.

"Cassandra, take some cake for Charlie. I chocolate-coated his yesterday. Oh, and take the slime figures for the neighborhood kids too."

Truth was, I had finished the figures last week. I had even packaged them all already. I had wanted to hand them over earlier, but baking practice had kept me so busy I was only getting them to her now.

Cassandra's eyes went round when she saw the ten neatly wrapped figures.

"Wait, you made these this fast?"

"Making them didn't take that long. I just never had a free moment to pass them along. How many cakes do you want to take?"

"Charlie, of course, and there are plenty of kids in the neighborhood who'd love them, so…"

Cassandra loaded ten figures and four cakes into her car and drove off.

Figuring I might as well deal with the rest of the cakes while I was at it, I stopped by James and the sisters on the second floor and gave each of them a cake.

That left one last cake.

"Hmm…"

I had been giving the kids a lot of sweets lately, so I hesitated to hand it over to them.

…What if I just eat the whole thing myself in secret?

I was briefly debating whether I should film a late-night cake mukbang when Greg called.

"Hello?"

"Huh? Quit what—the company?"

Something must have really gotten under his skin; his voice was slightly worked up.

"…"

Greg's complaining left me with nothing useful to say, so I just listened quietly.

A few minutes passed like that. When I figured I had heard enough, I asked,

"Greg, you free Monday morning next week?"

"Then come by my place Monday morning. Take the bus. Rachel told you I got a car, right? Come watch me drive a bit. It's been forever since I last got behind the wheel."

"If you're still on your way home, stop by and take a cake at least. Have you eaten dinner?"

I bathed the kids at the speed of light over the next twenty minutes.

I was just coming out of the bathroom with both of them wrapped up in big towels when Greg knocked on the front door.

I opened it with the kids still in my arms, and Reni greeted Greg cheerfully over my shoulder.

"Hi, Uncle!"

"Hey. Hi, Reni. Hi, Luca."

"…Unngh."

Luca gave a half-hearted answer with a face that radiated the slightest hint of annoyance. Greg looked at him with the most wounded expression in the world.

"Come on, Luca. I've known you basically since the day you were born. How long are you going to keep treating me like a nuisance?"

Luca whipped his head away without a word, and Reni burst into a peal of giggles.

"Stop bullying the kid. Wash your hands and sit at the table. I'll dry their hair and come out."

"Yeah, take your time."

I sat the kids on the bed, dried their hair, and got out their pajamas.

Lately Reni had been wanting to do more things on his own. Getting dressed was one of them, so all I had to do was hand him his pajamas.

Which meant I only had to dress Luca myself…

"…Huh?"

"Huh? What is it, Daddy?"

"No, Luca's…"

Looking closely, Luca seemed a little slimmer than before.

"Ah, so that's what it was."

"What was?"

"Nothing major… Just that kids really do seem to grow differently from morning to night."

Shaking a frying pan with one hand and searching on my phone with the other, I found that around ten months, babies' muscles and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bones firm up and their body shapes start to change.

I set the sizzling, perfectly cooked sausages and fries on the table still in the pan, along with the sauce, then pulled two cold cans of beer from the fridge and sat down.

"You're not feeding the kids?"

"They snacked a lot throughout the day, so they should be fine."

The kids were lying on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a blanket I had spread out in the living room, looking at a picture book together. They would probably drift off soon enough like that.

"…"

So does that mean Luca will get slim like Reni too?

Pride in Luca and a sharp pang of wistfulness hit me at the same time, and I took a long pull of the cold beer.

Glug, glug…

I drained the whole can in one go. Greg's eyes went wide.

"What. Did something happen to you too?"

"No, no."

I waved him off and grabbed another can from the fridge. Beer at the end of a long day tasted especially good.

After another swallow, I took a deep breath and gave him a brief rundown of what had happened that day.

"…I never thought I'd be doing something like this in my life, you know? But somehow it feels like we wrapped it up okay."

"Right. Congrats. So the book's coming out next year?"

"Yeah. There are a lot of authors involved, and apparently the editing and everything takes a while."

Greg nodded without a word and speared a sausage with his fork.

"Still, I'm glad. Feels like everything's falling into place."

"A lot of that is thanks to you."

"I didn't do anything."

"You did more than enough. So go on—tell me about quitting. Were you planning to leave around now, or did you just snap and walk out today?"

"…No, man, I swear."

Careful not to raise his voice for the kids behind him, Greg quietly laid out everything that had been going on.

"After you and Cassandra left, a couple months later they brought in two new hires."

I nodded. That sounded plausible enough. But what was the problem?

Had the new people openly looked down on Greg, saying he couldn't do his job?

"I used to be a bit of a scatterbrain, sure, but after Rachel got pregnant I barely made mistakes. Okay, sometimes I did, but still—I was doing good work."

Greg's voice rose with genuine indignation.

"Okay, don't get worked up. Just tell me calmly."

At that, Greg closed his eyes and took a long breath in and out, trying to settle himself.

Then he snapped his eyes open and spoke in a voice that still simmered with rage.

"The new hires' salaries were higher than mine."

What?

I wondered for a moment whether Greg had missed something. New hires making more than an experienced employee like Greg—that couldn't be right.

"Or maybe those new people were experienced hires? If they transferred from another company, that could happen."

"No. Fresh out of college. Kids who are still learning how to write emails from me. Complete rookies."

"…"

Those bastards?

Suddenly I was angry right along with him.

"My blood pressure's going up just hearing this. What the hell is that supposed to be?"

New hires making more than we had when we started—fine. That could happen. The minimum wage had gone up, and industry averages had risen overall.

But then weren't they supposed to give at least a little bump to the people already working there?

Even matching the salary of a new hire who couldn't write a proper email would make you sigh. Salary inversion on top of that?

"Come on, humanly speaking, shouldn't they at least throw a few hundred more bucks at the existing staff?"

"That's what I'm saying! There's a limit to how much you can disrespect people."

Even if the company only saw people as human "resources," and even if the positions Greg and I had held were entry-level spots they could swap out anytime…

"…Did Rachel tell you?"

Coworkers who shared an office usually didn't just openly compare salaries. Privacy. You roughly assumed you were in the same ballpark.

Plus, if I remembered right, there had been some kind of confidentiality clause in the contract too.

So if Greg had found out, it meant someone in HR or accounting had tipped him off—and those people were far too tight-lipped for that.

In the end, it had to be his boss, Rachel. She had learned the truth, gotten furious at the unfairness done to her boyfriend, and told him with the clear meaning that he should quit.

Greg nodded. On his face was a mix of guilt and shame toward the woman who was his girlfriend now and would be his wife later.

"Actually, Rachel knew from the start. She just didn't tell me because she thought it'd hurt me. I'd been planning to quit a month or two after she left anyway, so there was no real need."

But over the past few days, Greg had been stuck cleaning up the new hires' mistakes with late nights and getting chewed out on calls with clients. Watching that, Rachel had finally snapped and told him to quit on the spot.

Greg let out a long sigh.

"I—well, I made plenty of mistakes when I first started too… And if I could get along with the new kids for even a few months, that seemed better, so I helped them as much as I could."

But from Rachel's perspective, knowing the full story, of course she was livid.

Even if it had just been a subordinate, it would have sat wrong with her. Watching the man she loved more than anything get treated like that—she had held it in and held it in until she finally exploded.

Greg took a long drink of beer with a gloomy face, then sighed for what must have been the umpteenth time.

"…If I'd just been a little more impressive, she wouldn't have gotten so upset."

He added that he wouldn't even be able to tell his family the real reason he quit—too embarrassing to say out loud anywhere.

"Hey. Stop digging a hole and crawling into it. This isn't on you. The company's the one that can't do its job."

Some people would say a company "naturally" had to cut labor costs like that. A few disgruntled employees could just be swapped out like spare parts.

But that was a clear mistake by management that only counted the profits and losses right in front of their noses.

The loyalty and affection employees felt for a company didn't always come down to the money it paid them.

If they had just shown the most basic respect, no one would have had to feel this miserable.

Greg hung his head and muttered bitterly,

"Still… I worked there for years. Quitting overnight like this feels weird."

A company was a place where you found your own sense of purpose even if no one praised you for it, where you built belonging and that complicated mix of fondness and irritation with the people you saw every day.

My own case—when they refused to accommodate the changes that came with a new family and talked ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about "special treatment"—had been bad enough. Greg's situation felt just as unfair.

Word always got around somehow. Especially when long-term employees were treated this badly.

It was the kind of sensitive topic that would explode if someone so much as posted a single line on an anonymous board.

If anyone else found themselves in Greg's position, would they really want to keep working there?

Only after the quiet, reliable people started disappearing one by one would they finally wake up. Or maybe they never would.