Clock In Only Once

Seojin's access badge was rejected once at the front gate of the logistics center. The reason given was exclusion from duty. A document number sent by Oh Jeongho was pinned to the security terminal.

Access restricted for a family stakeholder on site.

Doyun didn't scan his own badge first. He held up the notice on his phone to the security booth window instead. "Records Officer Yun Seojin is restricted from contact with the Hajun case. This site call came from the logistics center."

The guard was on night duty. His name tag read Jang Yeongsik. He read the notice, looked at Seojin, then read the notice again. "I only do what comes down from above."

"Who's above?" Seojin asked.

Jang Yeongsik didn't answer. He pressed the manager call button. A notice was posted beside it.

Punch the night shift clock in only once. A record punched twice will not be processed as a clock out.

Han Sua was already waiting at the inner fence. Instead of her delivery bag she wore a fluorescent safety vest. The back of the vest read TEMPORARY LOADING STAFF. She didn't wave from beyond the fence, just held up her phone.

"Someone here hasn't been able to clock out since last night. They're telling him to stay until tonight because his card got punched in twice, and I couldn't tell if that's actually in his employment contract or just some urban legend, so I called."

"Why are you wearing a vest, Sua?"

"They said they wouldn't let me in otherwise. They put my name on the day labor registration app. No pay though. Apparently I'm just observing."

Han Sua's words were short and plain. Seojin checked the app screen. Name: Han Sua. Work type: temporary observer. Wage field: 0 won. Below that was a hazard consent checkbox. It was already checked.

"Who checked this?"

"The site foreman. He said I couldn't get in otherwise. I didn't check it."

Doyun looked at the fence lock. It only opened from the inside. The intercom in the security booth crackled.

"This is Manager Baek Gijun from Daon Life Safety. Quite late to be visiting."

Baek Gijun came out in a padded vest over his work clothes. There was a tired smile on his face. He didn't greet Seojin first. He spoke to the guard instead.

"Senior Jang, let them in, on my responsibility. Except Seojin here only records. On site instructions come from Handler Kang."

Seojin didn't let that pass. "You said on your responsibility. Please write down the scope of that responsibility."

Baek Gijun's smile thinned a little. "I called you here to save our own people. If you shove paperwork in people's faces first, it puts a bad mood on the floor."

Han Sua spoke right up. "The mood is why a person can't clock out."

Baek Gijun looked at Sua. "You're not one of our employees."

"That's exactly why I see it more clearly."

The security gate opened. Inside the center, the refrigerated warehouse and the regular warehouse stood connected. The conveyor belt never stopped. Boxes passed by in a line, and workers scanned their wrist terminals and moved boxes onto pallets. The overhead display board read outbound rate 93%, delay 47-1 min. Seojin zoomed in and photographed the numbers without attaching any meaning to them.

The person who filed the report was a day laborer named Kim Munsik. He was sitting in a chair in the break room, but his safety boots were still laced onto his feet. The laces were undone, and his socks were wet.

"Did you scan out?"

Kim Munsik nodded. "Three times. It beeped each time too. But my name never comes off the display board. The foreman told me to scan again, so I scanned the clock-in side, and it clocked me in again."

He showed his wrist terminal. The record was strange.

22:01 clock in. 22:01 clock in. 03:17 clock out failed. 07:00 shift standby. 22:01 clock in maintained.

Below the failed clock out there was a reason listed.

Registration category incomplete.

Seojin asked. "What's registration category?"

Baek Gijun answered for him. "Regular, contract, dispatch, day labor. And even within day labor, it splits by agency. There's no way to work the floor and memorize all of that."

"So the system sorts it instead?"

"That's how workers' compensation gets processed."

Han Sua spoke without smiling. "It processes as an industrial accident, but he can't clock out?"

Kim Munsik set his hands on his knees. The back of his hand had two stamp marks in ink. One was a blue clock in, and the other was the same blue clock in. There was no clock out stamp.

A new set of rules was posted on the break room wall.

1. Punch the clock in only once. 2. Do not remove gloves before scanning out. 3. Workers with an incomplete registration category clock out only after manager confirmation.

Below the third line there was fine print. Leaving before manager confirmation will be processed as unauthorized absence.

Kim Munsik pointed at that line. "They said if I go home now, I lose both today's wage and yesterday's."

Baek Gijun said, "I never said that. It was probably the agency foreman."

"You're the one who told the agency foreman not to let shipping fall behind," Han Sua shot back.

Baek Gijun shut his mouth. Seojin didn't write down every word between the two of them. Instead she wrote: pressure over shipping delays, wage loss, possible unauthorized absence processing.

Doyun stood in front of the clock-in terminal. "Show me the clock-out terminal."

The clock-out terminal was the same machine as the clock-in terminal. Only the on screen button was different. Clock in was green, clock out was gray. When Kim Munsik scanned his wrist terminal, the clock out button lit briefly, then went dark.

Registration category incomplete. Manager confirmation required.

Baek Gijun took out his own manager card. "I can confirm it myself."

Seojin stopped him. "If a single manager's confirmation processes the clock out, whose responsibility is that?"

"Mine."

"Does that responsibility guarantee Kim Munsik clocks out, or does it just leave someone else behind under your name?"

Baek Gijun's hand stopped on the card. The question seemed to be a first for him too. Han Sua spoke up beside him. "Putting your name on the line here might make the name disappear instead. It happened before too."

Doyun asked Kim Munsik. "Who saw the moment it got punched twice?"

Two workers raised their hands. One was a regular team leader, the other a day laborer. The regular team leader gave his name. Oh Seungpil. The day laborer hesitated, then said, "Raman."

Baek Gijun spoke right away. "He's a foreign worker, the pronunciation might not come out exactly right."

Han Sua looked at Baek Gijun. "It's a person's name, and you're already checking the pronunciation?"

Raman tried to pull out a copy of his foreign resident registration card. Seojin stopped him with a hand. "Don't expose the original number. We only need the name and today's work team."

The two witnesses stood in front of the clock-in terminal. Oh Seungpil had a company employee number, and Raman only had the agency app QR code. When the two of them confirmed Kim Munsik's clock in record at the same time, a new button appeared on the screen.

Joint clock-out confirmation.

Baek Gijun raised his card with a relieved look. Just then the printer beneath the clock-in terminal spat out paper. Beneath Kim Munsik's name, the same line was printed twice.

Clock in. Clock in.

Baek Gijun had someone bring Kim Munsik's employment contract. It was a single sheet of paper, stamped by the agency at the bottom. Working hours ran from 22:00 to 07:00. Beside that was fine print. If output falls short, extension possible at manager's discretion.

Han Sua pointed at that line with her finger. "Extension means extra pay, right?"

Baek Gijun took his time answering. "It varies by agency."

"Then check whether extra pay got added for the person who couldn't clock out."

Eunchae opened the pending payroll data. Kim Munsik's previous shift was logged at nine hours. Today showed zero hours. But work assignments kept coming in regardless. The work kept getting handed out, while the hours never carried over to the next day.

"His working hours stopped, but the work assignments are still active," Seojin said.

Kim Munsik lifted his head. "That's why I kept working. They said if I didn't, it'd count as unauthorized absence, and they'd only pay for yesterday."

Doyun looked at the floor beside the clock-in terminal. Footprints overlapped in many places, but a line of blue ink marks ran in a single trail. It was the trace of people pressing their hands against the wall before putting on gloves, after stamping the back of their hands at clock in. There were several blue dots on the wall. Two of them overlapped at the same hand height.

"Kim Munsik might not be the only one who got punched twice."

Baek Gijun spoke right away. "It could just be ink that rubbed off while washing hands."

"I'll leave it as a possibility." Seojin took a photo. "Repeated stamp marks on the back of the hand. Cause unconfirmed."

There were four lunch boxes in the break room fridge. Only one had a name tag. Kim Munsik. The rest had only agency names and numbers. Raman pointed at his own lunch box and said, "Mine, R-12."

"You don't need to write your name?"

Raman looked at Baek Gijun. Baek Gijun answered, looking uncomfortable. "The agency manages by number. Foreign names are long, and there are a lot of misspellings on site."

Han Sua said, "If it's wrong, you fix it. Switch to numbers, and you can't even see when a person got it wrong."

Raman said his own name quietly. Seojin wrote it down both in Hangul, matching the pronunciation, and in Roman letters. Raman looked at it and nodded. Writing the name took twenty seconds. The conveyor belt didn't stop for those twenty seconds.

The clock-in terminal screen kept holding the joint clock-out confirmation button. But one more condition had appeared beneath the button.

One manager's approval required.

Seojin looked at Baek Gijun's card. "If you close this out with just one manager, only Kim Munsik clocks out and the rest could be left behind. We need the joint witnesses, manager approval, and a full list of everyone who failed to clock out."

Baek Gijun swallowed his irritation. "That'll take time."

"Time lost is also a cost. Someone has to write down who bears it."

Han Sua opened the notes app on her phone. "Who's waiting at home for you, Mr. Kim?"

Kim Munsik looked flustered. "My wife. Two kids. I was supposed to drop the younger one off at kindergarten. Couldn't go."

Seojin didn't write out the family details at length. Real cost of failed clock out: child drop off, sleep, chance of making the next shift. Looking at that line, Kim Munsik spoke for the first time, not about why he kept working, but about where he hadn't been able to go.

Baek Gijun pretended not to see the note. But his manager card stopped moving in front of the clock-in terminal.

Jang Yeongsik called in over the radio from the security booth. "Manager, an outside vehicle is coming in. Says it's waiting to load at cold storage bay 3."

Baek Gijun picked up the radio. "Have it wait."

"A delay fee kicks in."

"Let it wait anyway."

The moment those words came out, the manager approval required message on the clock-in terminal screen flickered. It was the first time Baek Gijun had put a person even slightly ahead of shipping. It wasn't a full choice. He still hadn't signed or used his card. But the word delay fee had entered the floor.

Beside the clock-in terminal was a small return box, meant for workers to drop off gloves and utility knives before leaving. Six pairs of gloves were already piled inside. There were no name tags, only agency codes. Kim Munsik recognized his own gloves. He said he'd written the first letter of his child's name small on the inside of the wrist.

"His clock out failed, but his gloves got returned," Seojin said.

Eunchae checked the records. "Equipment return complete, person's clock out failed. The item is out, the person stayed behind."

Han Sua looked at the gloves. "The gloves clock out faster than the person."

Baek Gijun couldn't answer that. Instead he reached to lock the equipment return box, then stopped. Locking it could look like closing off evidence. He pulled his hand back and spoke to Jang Yeongsik instead. "Put two people on watch over the return box. One from security, one from the floor. Write down their names."

Jang Yeongsik looked at Raman. Raman checked that his own name was going into the watcher slot and nodded. It was a name, not an agency code. The joint clock-out confirmation button on the clock-in terminal screen didn't disappear, but a new line appeared beneath it: equipment return complete. Person's failed clock out and equipment return complete now sat on the same screen. One more visible inconsistency had appeared for anyone to see.

Seojin didn't tear off the notice beside the clock-in terminal. She only lifted the edge. Underneath, an earlier line remained. It wasn't Punch the clock in only once, it was Confirm your own clock in and clock out yourself. Someone had shortened the sentence, moving the responsibility for confirming clock out away from the worker and onto the machine and the manager. Seojin didn't write that this was a guess about the original wording. She only wrote down the visible characters. Clock in and clock out. Yourself. Confirm. Three words remained.

Doyun marked Kim Munsik's clock out route on the floor with tape. Clock-in terminal, break room, equipment return box, clock-out terminal. Of the four points, only in front of the clock-out terminal were there two overlapping layers of blue footprints. It was the trace of the same person coming back and being pushed toward the clock-in terminal again. Seojin attached the route photos in order. The floor proved it before any words did.

Jang Yeongsik wrote his own name on that route photo too. The security booth was no longer just a pass through point, it had become part of the clock in and clock out record.

A new line printed beneath the second stamp.

No clock out scheduled.