Shortage - SCP Foundation

You get up. You shit, shower, and shave, because you have to go to work. Like everyone else, you hate going to work.

It's not, generally speaking, all that bad. It's just stressful. You've got twenty or so people working with you, doing the work of fifty. Hell, they have enough cubicles for fifty.

It's the same thing when you drive to work. Your subdivision has about forty people in it, but there's houses for twice that many. It makes a sick degree of sense, though. There's a labor shortage, and the government figures that if they pay people to build houses and workplaces, people will start having more kids. Nowadays, you can't even spit without seeing the commercials that talk about how great the houses are, and how easy it is to start a family with practically-free housing. It's passive-aggressive politics at its best: "We spent all this money making all of these cubicles and houses for you, the least you could do is populate them!"

Halfway to work, you notice the fading post-it note by your radio, with a list of stations on them. You try each one, just like you always do, even though you can't remember the last time most of them were live. Sure enough, the only one with anyone on it is the last one. There's so many things that need doing in the world, and running a radio station isn't one of them.

You stop to fill up your car. You see Rachel, filling up her car at the same. She lives in your subdivision. Pretty cute. You two fuck occasionally, but nothing serious. It's that pleasant time before one of you grows too attached, and you'll try to make something official, which'll ruin everything. You bet it'll be you that gets too attached. You wave at her, sitting on the ass-end of her car, listening to her MP3 player while her tank fills up. You make a mental note to ask her out, when you're done filling up.

Again, the stupidity of the government smacks you in the face. There's eight fill-up spots. Can you remember how many times you've seen two cars being filled up? Sure, you're experiencing one right now. Three? That'd take you a while. Four? Never. They've built too too many cubicles, furnished houses, and gas station fill-ups in the hopes that the populace will just jump into bed, squirt out kids, and find use for them. Disgusting.

Your car fills up, and you close the gas flap. You turn back to the other car, and there's still nobody there. As you're about to get back in your car, you notice a MP3 player on the ground, underneath the other car's back bumper.

You know how expensive those things can be, and how shitty it would be if you had backed up over your MP3 player. So you walk over to where it the thing lays. It's not broken, still playing that one band the government hadn't forcibly disbanded. You figure that the person is inside paying, and you realize that handing them back in person is going to make you late for work. You quickly wrap the player's chord around their car's antenna. If they don't notice it there, fuck them.

Your good deed done for the day, you get back in your car and peel out. You've wasted enough time, and now you're going to be late for work. Your co-workers are going to be insufferable (well, even more so than usual) because of it.

Your drive into work is uneventful. It's too quiet, though, since there's nothing on the radio to listen to.