Chapter 6: Suspicious Sam

Back at work, Sam was one of George's snitches and my hated rival. I can't remember when Sam started hating me, or even why we continued to dislike each other after working together for several years, but we did. It was mostly petty stuff, I'd avoid him and he'd snitch on me. Our boss, George knew about it and, as long as it didn't interfere with work, left us alone. Now Sam knew that I was being punished with the scout detail to the lab level. But I guess her got a suspicion that I wasn't bringing up a lot of inventory reports from the level I was supposed to be surveying. Sam confronted me one night at quitting time, accusing me of being lazy and sleeping on the job. I laughed at him, telling him that he should worry about himself rather than about my work habits. Looking over to the admin building, I saw George standing in the window, watching the whole scene. I nodded toward him but he turned away from the window without acknowledging either Sam's scene or my nod.

George was looking at the inventory slips Jack had submitted for that week. Since most of the items were electrical equipment, George was happy because that indicated a lot of wiring, which in turn indicated profit. He initialed the slips and put them in a routing envelope. He shrugged on his coat and left his office. On his way out, George walked through the distribution room. Facing a wall of pigeon hole boxes, he ran his eyes across the tags which noted which offices each box belonged to. He dropped the envelope containing Jack's inventory slips into the only distribution box without a nametag. For a moment he wondered who emptied that box and read the inventory slips, but then he remembered Larry.