Lisps are funny.

My work day begins every morning at 4:00 am. My cell phone screams at me from among the dark corpses of disused radio alarm clocks and I rise wishing everything would die.
I claw my way out of bed, put on my uniform, and stumble down my apartment building’s treacherous staircase to my bicycle, slamming the gate behind me as I saddle up and ride out. I work at a shipping company on Swan Island, a man-made industrial park in the middle of the Columbia River. The early morning fog rising from the banks is sometimes illuminated by the numerous lights of the cargo ships, creating an eerie illusion that the island shores are receding. It occurs to me that I probably shouldn’t be riding so quickly down a two mile hill driven by groggy, unfulfilled industrial workers when my motor skills are so diminished. I scowl into the darkness and shrug it off.  
I punch the security code and enter the building, a huge warehouse illuminated by big florescent lights that look like jelly fish and make everything just a little too bright. I stomp past the rows of neat, white delivery trucks and into the break room. Here is where I meet the first consciousness of the day, Eli, A slim black guy slightly older then I am who practices martial arts. We have an unspoken agreement about morning pleasantries and sit quietly across the table from each other. I glare at the floor and he swings absent-minded punches into the air.
Our duties were recently instated. The company is part of a big corporation which is always “improving” our efficiency by way of clunky, cheap technology. The new scanner guns look like they were designed by someone trapped in the 80’s, during the peak of the Alien quadrilogy. This person seems to think wide-spread tendentious will benefit the company as the guns are roughly five pounds and must be used rapidly and continuously for a two hour package sort. Eli and I are in charge of cleaning and maintaining the damn things, which break if any one of the many lasers gets something on it.
After we set them up, the guns are swept away and the sort begins. It is mindless work and my inner monologue usually dominates, my glazed eyes watching my arms throw boxes onto the conveyor belt. Then, the conveyor belt slows and I struggle to form sentences as my co-workers say goodbye.
This is the time when I manage the technical repercussions of the “improvement”. I was provided with a plastic desk and a computer which bleeps menacingly when I try to tab through the text fields. They are housed into sub-manager Tim’s office. He previously had the room to himself and it shows.
He talks to himself as he sits at his computer. Not quietly, under his breath, but loudly in exactly the same way he speaks. He says things like “Oh no, let’s fix that.” and I always think he’s talking to me. I turn from my monitor saying “What?” and he slowly returns my stare, looking unwarrantedly concerned and confused. “I didn’t say anything,” he replies suspiciously, as if I’ve been reading his mind. He has a very pronounced lisp combined with a deep gravel and at these awkward moments I want to clear my throat on his behalf.
In addition to talking to his spreadsheets, Tim listens to the music that a 13 year old girl might enjoy. Not only do I suspect that he is not “Bringing sexy back” I deduce that he’s tone deaf as well. He’ll whistle along with the throbbing dance beats, but the noises he’s emitting are just a series of unrelated pitched that don’t correspond to the music at all. Maybe this is why the real managers call him “Timmy”.
The saddest about all this is that I had to weasel my way into it. Before this I was just shy of three daily hours. That, my friends, is not much to live on, even with my boyfriend’s additional income. So when I heard about the upcoming “improvement” I took to hanging around the station manager’s office, sighing and lamenting to passers-by about my finical woes. I timed my breaks so that mangers would happen on me answering technical questions or scrawling out computer code. “What’s that?” they’d say.  
“Oh, this?” I ‘d sigh nonchalantly “this is my next game…”
I shudder to think what kind of jobs those without High School diplomas must succumb to.