“Until I came along,” I say quietly.
She nods.
“I can’t believe no one said anything.”
Mackie gives me a careful look. “You haven’t either.”
My mouth opens.
Then closes.
She’s right.
“I… haven’t,” I admit. “If Logan knew…” I shake my head. “He would’ve fired him months ago. He definitely wouldn’t be thinking about promoting him.”
Her eyes widen. “He’s promoting Arnon?”
“Operations manager.”
“You can’t let that happen,” she blurts, then immediately winces. “I mean-”
“I know what you mean,” I cut in gently. “It’s fine. I’ll deal with it.”
Her shoulders ease. “Thank you.”
When she leaves, I look back down at my phone.
Logan’s and my personal issues have started bleeding into our professional lives, and that’s not something I can afford to ignore.
When things were good between us, I would’ve brought Arnon up the first time I noticed the attitude. I wouldn’t have hesitated. We used to talk about everything.
From work to which brand of toilet paper to buy. Nothing was off-limits.
But it’s hard to talk business when you’re trying to hold together a marriage that feels like it’ll break if you sneeze too hard.
Therapy will be good.
The sooner the better.
Logan comes to my office around eight. By that time most of the day staff are on their third or fourth cup of coffee, counting down the minutes until their shift ends. The surveillance team runs on eight-hour rotations. Three shifts a day. According to labor laws, no employee can work more than two consecutive shifts, and lately we’ve been paying double for that second one because we’re short-staffed.
People think watching cameras is simple. They ask why we don’t just assign one person to monitor everything. Or better yet, why not replace them with AI.
Because first, we value human judgment. And second, AI can’t always tell the difference between a grocery bag blowing across a parking lot and a man crawling under a delivery truck. It doesn’t always know the difference between a break-in and two cats aggressively mating in front of a warehouse camera.
We use AI, of course. But it’s managed by people.
Most of our clients are small stores and warehouses. They can’t or don’t want to, pay for on-site guards. So they pay us. And we pay someone to watch their cameras from here. It’s not glamorous, but it funds our lives and a lot of other people’s too.
“Hey,” Logan says, closing my office door behind him.
He walks straight to the floor-to-ceiling windows and whistles low. “Damn. You’ve got the better view.”
I smile faintly. “You could always move in.”
He glances back at me, something almost playful in his eyes. “Careful. I might. Arnon can take my office.”
My smile fades.
