all done

It ended without fanfare, my hold down of R5. After a wickedly heavy day-after-a-Monday-holiday nightmare of a shift, I returned to the PO to find a note at ‘my’ case. “Jim, see me,” it said. It was signed by the supervisor on duty.

I went to check the schedule and sure enough, it had changed in the three and a half hours since I last looked. I was no longer scheduled for the rest of this week; the R5s next to my name had all been erased.

“Jim Regular is back starting tomorrow,” said the supervisor when I found him, “You knew that, right?”

“Nope. I’m just finding out now.”

“Oh.”

And that was it.

I cased the five foot high pile of flats the clerks had left for me, plus the five tubs of third class that I couldn’t get to this morning. Then I went home. The hold down lasted three months and five days.