One More Person Than Inventory

The startup bell for the next shift was only supposed to ring inside the warehouse. Out in the break room, no one should have heard it at all. But Kim Munsik's wrist terminal and Han Sua's temporary observer app buzzed at the same moment.

Clock-in confirmation required.

Han Sua flipped her phone over the instant she saw the screen. "I'm not working. You said this was just observing."

Baek Gijun said, "Even observer registration counts as entering the site, so an attendance code can get logged."

"I'm getting paid zero won but I still get clocked in?"

"I know that's a problem."

"If you know, turn it off."

Baek Gijun couldn't turn it off right away. On the manager's screen, shift B's clock-out queue and the next shift's clock-in were showing at the same time. Two shifts couldn't be inside the same warehouse. But the system kept the interior headcount fixed at twelve. Oh Seungpil's earlier claim that the actual roster looked like thirteen still hung in the air.

Doyun looked inside through the small window in the fire door. Rows of fluorescent lights were lit up inside the refrigerated warehouse. Workers stood beside the conveyor belt. Their movements were slow. Someone carried a box and walked back to the same spot. The forklift sat still.

"If we open the door, we count the people inside first," Seojin said. "We keep the roster, the actual count, and the scanner count separate."

Eunchae pulled up the inventory scanner log. The scheduled shipment count for refrigerated line 3 today was 480 units. The current scan count was 479. One unscanned. But the worker position tags numbered thirteen.

"One product short, one person too many."

"You mean it could be corrected as a product?"

"It's a possibility. Don't confirm it yet."

Baek Gijun opened the door with his manager's card. This time he didn't open it all the way. Doyun went in first, and Seojin recorded from just outside the threshold. Han Sua tried to go in too but Doyun blocked her.

"Sua's registration looks off. Witness from outside the door."

"If you leave me out while counting people, that's one person short again."

"That's exactly why we count you as a witness from outside the door," Seojin said.

Displeasure stayed on Han Sua's face, but she stepped back. She pressed against the door frame and copied down the workers' names one by one. When a pronunciation was off, she asked the person again. Raman slowly said the name of his own final consonant-free pronunciation. Nguyen Thi Lan told her not to swap the order of family name and given name. Seojin kept that request exactly as asked.

Inside the refrigerated warehouse, the scanner beeped at a person. It was only supposed to read product barcodes. When Doyun stepped between a worker and the scanner, an error came up on the screen.

Not a product.

Next it read the temporary QR code stuck on Raman's vest.

Empty pallet 1.

Raman looked down at his own vest. "I'm not a pallet."

"I know," Seojin said. "I'm recording your own statement."

The scanner read Park Seonyeong's glove and displayed empty pallet 1, then read Nguyen Thi Lan's cap and displayed empty pallet 1 again. All of them got the same label. It was a way of bundling excess personnel into a single empty pallet.

Baek Gijun tried to grab the scanner away. "This equipment is defective."

Han Sua called from outside the door. "If it's defective, why does it only read day laborers?"

Oh Seungpil showed his permanent employee ID number. The scanner read him as worker 08. Kim Munsik came up as empty pallet 1. Raman was also empty pallet 1. Park Seonyeong and Lan showed the same value too.

Eunchae said, "It's not merging them into one person, it's merging them into one empty item. It's processing the people as shortage inventory instead of excess inventory."

"So that's how the product count balances out?"

"Yes. The one unscanned product gets replaced by empty pallet 1. Because a pallet can be shipped out."

Seojin looked at the warehouse floor. Empty pallets stood against the wall. One of them had a label on it. Empty pallet 1. The barcode was blurry, but the numbers were legible. 000-47-1.

Baek Gijun said quietly, "That's a return pallet. It has nothing to do with people."

"Then why does Raman's vest read as the same number?"

Baek Gijun had no answer.

Seojin didn't try to erase empty pallet 1 right away. Saying the label was wrong wasn't enough. This place's system could ship out even a mislabeled item. What was needed was a different classification.

"We need to separate the records where a worker and a pallet were scanned at the same time."

Eunchae copied the scanner log. Product code, worker tag, location tag, time. None of the four values included a person's name. Everything was a code. Only permanent employee Oh Seungpil remained under his employee ID number; everyone else had a temporary QR code.

"Do the temporary QR codes get reused?"

Baek Gijun hesitated before answering. "Sometimes the agency hands one down to the next person."

"So could last month's Choi Mijeong's QR code be attached to someone else right now?"

"In principle, no."

"And in practice?" Han Sua asked.

Baek Gijun looked at the empty pallets against the warehouse wall. "It's possible."

As soon as he said it, a small line appeared under empty pallet 1 on the scanner screen.

Reuse available.

Han Sua said, "The machine listens to you, doesn't it, sir."

"It's not listening. A setting that already existed just surfaced," Eunchae said. "An admission might be the trigger, but the setting itself was already there."

Seojin trimmed down Eunchae's sentence. Hidden setting displayed after manager's statement. Cause unconfirmed.

Raman tried to peel off his vest's QR code and set it on the floor. Doyun stopped him. "If you leave it on the floor, it becomes an item."

"Then where do I put it?"

"Hold it yourself, and we'll attach a separate name tag."

Seojin made paper name tags. Raman, Park Seonyeong, Nguyen Thi Lan, Kim Munsik. Each person confirmed their own name, and one other person witnessed and signed. The name tags were tied with string around the wrist, not on the vest. It was a way to separate the QR code from the body without separating a person's name from their body.

When they ran the scanner through again, the results were slightly different. For Raman it read empty pallet 1 / name tag Raman, conflict. Park Seonyeong showed a conflict too. So did Lan. The moment the word conflict appeared, the belt stopped for three seconds.

"It stops when there's a conflict," Eunchae said.

"Then we need to make it keep stopping," Han Sua said.

Baek Gijun shook his head immediately. "If the line keeps stopping, we lose the refrigerated goods."

"What about losing a person?"

No one spoke right away this time. Seojin didn't record that line of dialogue. A sentence too neatly put together could obscure the scene later. Instead she wrote: belt stopped three seconds, conflict displayed, dispute over disposal costs.

Oh Seungpil held out his permanent employee ID card. "Can I use my card to clock these people out?"

Eunchae said, "Don't. If you cover a day laborer's clock-out with a permanent employee ID, you could end up becoming the replacement worker, Mr. Oh."

Oh Seungpil slowly lowered the card. He wanted to help, but not if the method meant putting one more person back into the system.

Han Sua's temporary observer app kept turning on by itself. A view contract button appeared on the screen. She reached to press it, then looked at Seojin.

"Can I press it?"

"Don't press it alone. Screen recording, two witnesses, and check the pre-consent wording first."

Han Sua twisted her lips. "If the app registration had worked like this from the start, I wouldn't be here."

The contract said temporary support, not observation. Wages to be paid after negotiation. The negotiating party was left blank. Han Sua confirmed the possibility of unpaid clock-ins registered under her own name. There was now one more reason the scanner had read her as empty pallet 1. She was registered, but her wages, employer, and person in charge were all blank.

Seojin wrote down every one of those blanks. The more blanks there were, the more the system pushed a person toward becoming an item.

The scanner sounded again. This time it was Han Sua's phone. Even though she was outside the door, the temporary observer app's QR was still active. Han Sua tried to turn off the screen, but the app opened again on its own.

Observer classification incomplete. Inventory correction pending.

Seojin said, "Put the phone down. Face down so the screen doesn't show."

Han Sua set the phone face down on the floor. But the scanner beeped at her again anyway. Outside the door, outside the work line, above the temporary loading and unloading text on the back of her vest, a red light swept past.

After Han Sua was read as empty pallet 1, she deliberately took a step back. The scanner's light followed her. Outside the door, outside the safety line, outside the worker roster. Still, as long as the temporary observer QR stayed active, the classification kept following her.

"What if I delete the app?"

Eunchae stopped her right away. "If you delete it, the log could disappear. If the log disappears, this registration just now becomes something that never happened."

Han Sua looked down at her phone. "One app turns a person into an item, and I can't even withdraw whenever I want?"

Seojin didn't write that withdrawal was impossible. She wrote: deletion risk before log is preserved. Han Sua saw the difference and nodded. Even angry, she didn't ruin the wording of the record.

Baek Gijun opened the QR issuance history on the agency's manager screen. The name Choi Mijeong hadn't come up yet. Instead, the same QR bundle had been assigned last month to someone called M-17, then reassigned this month to Raman. M-17 wasn't a name, it was a temporary code.

"Is this M-17 Choi Mijeong?" Seojin asked.

"I don't know," Baek Gijun said, admitting it this time. "If the agency doesn't hand over the names, all we see is the code."

"Then you shipped her out without knowing," Han Sua said.

Baek Gijun didn't answer. But he didn't close the QR issuance history either. He knew by now that closing it could send everything back to a blank.

In the scanner log, next to reuse available, there was a reason for reuse. Unretrieved equipment correction. A person's QR code had been filed under an equipment correction reason. Raman grabbed his own vest with his hand.

"I'm not equipment."

Seojin answered. "I'm recording that sentence too."

It wasn't comfort. But it kept Raman's name tag from disappearing off the scanner's conflict list. A person's own statement held its ground on the same screen as item classification.

The scanner's conflict list didn't stay up long. After thirty seconds it disappeared automatically. Eunchae was screen recording, but when it vanished from the live screen, the workers grew uneasy again. Seojin copied the conflict results onto paper and had each person confirm them.

Raman tried to press a thumbprint next to his name instead of signing. He said he wasn't used to signing in Hangul. Seojin didn't force a signature. Name confirmation method: pronunciation check by the person, romanization comparison, thumbprint. Park Seonyeong signed, and Lan wrote her name in Vietnamese order.

Baek Gijun looked at the paper and said, "Legal could raise a formatting issue with this later."

"That's exactly why we're writing down the differences in format."

Seojin attached the confirmation method next to each name. It mattered not to force everyone into the same format. This place's anomaly pushed anyone who didn't fit the format toward becoming an empty item. It was better not to hide the fact that the formats were different.

The scanner tried to read the paper but failed because there was no barcode. For the first time, the sound of failure sounded like a safe sound. Seojin didn't write it that way. She wrote: no barcode, automatic classification failed.

Baek Gijun tried to suspend the QR bundle on the agency's app to stop the temporary QR from being reused. Before he pressed the suspend button, Eunchae stopped the screen. "If you suspend it, the current worker's records could disappear along with it."

"Then what do we do?"

"Not deletion, freezing. It needs to be locked as read-only."

Baek Gijun couldn't find the menu for it. The app had no word for freezing. All it had was deactivate, delete, and reissue. All three were dangerous. Seojin photographed the screen. A system with no safe option was itself a clue.

Han Sua said, "It shouldn't be deleted, just made unusable, but the only button is delete."

In the end, Baek Gijun sent a text to the agency's representative requesting a freeze. No reply came. But the time of the request and the recipient stayed on record. The reuse available text stayed on the scanner screen, but a line reading pending manager action was added underneath it.

Even after the freeze request was sent, the scanner kept following Han Sua. Doyun set up an empty paper box between the scanner and Han Sua. The box read as a product, but no person's name registered. The box's screen displayed unscanned.

"Guess a box makes a better shield," Han Sua said.

Seojin didn't treat the box as a solution. She wrote: temporary shielding, risk of product misidentification. Using an object to hide a person could carry a different cost if used too long.

The empty box shielding lasted only ten seconds. The scanner soon tried to register the box as an unscanned product. When Doyun moved the box away, Han Sua got caught by the scanner again. Seojin wrote down the shielding failure too. Even a failed method needed to be recorded so the next person wouldn't repeat it.

A new label came up on the scanner screen in place of a name.

Empty pallet 1.