Week 21, Title: A vision softly creeping

Lydia has worked at the Uber-mart for a long time. She’s been there through loves lost and found, through raising kids and babysitting grandkids. She’s been there for countless birthdays and anniversaries, births and deaths (those of both personal and work families). Innumerable people have come and gone; retirements, graduations, promotions. She’s taken joy in their joys and pain in their pains. She’s watched the store through corporate restructurings and recessions, through bustling holidays and quiet lazy afternoons, through mass hiring and mass firing. Through take-overs and remodelling and the slow-grinding changes of stock. She’s seen the chaos of product recalls and was there the day the last pricing gun stopped working.

She knows the store, knows the people, knows the products, knows the cracks on the shelves and the sight-line of every mirror. And she knows something is different. She knows something is wrong.

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