"Very good. You can keep your job no matter how incompetent you are."

"Thank you, sir."

"I have to return to supervise the idiots in undercarriage. I'm sure you'll be able to find the way to paint now." He leaves her in the office.

She still has no idea where the paint section is??? It is a wonder that this factory produces anything at all, if in fact it does.

Whatever. She can go back to looking for the paint section.

Eventually she can find her way to the paint section and clock in late enough that she is not getting paid for today.

What, at all? - whatever, not her problem. Maybe the rest of the people here are in fact desperate enough for work that they keep working just for the possibility of being paid at some later date. Still seems like a pretty wild way to run a business, though.

Paint sounds like it probably gets applied towards the end of a creation process, what exactly is she painting?

She is painting the outside of a confusing collection of machinery. Unclear whether it actually is confusing and nonsensical or if she just doesn't understand machines.

Can she see what happens to the machinery after it gets painted??

It goes through an assembly line to a different section where people are lifting it up and connecting it to some other kind of machinery.

Eventually they get a twenty-minute break for lunch! It takes seven minutes to walk to the lunchroom.

Some of the bosses yell NO RUNNING.

Why does anybody keep working here. Whatever. She will walk to the lunchroom.

The good news is that there is free food! The bad news is that there is visibly some mold on her burger.

She was planning to skip lunch anyway in case the food was drugged.

Everyone is downcast. No one talks. They just stare at their food (often brought from home) and wolf it down as quickly as possible.

Everyone looks so miserable.

She sees someone take out a vial of something orange and swallow it.

If it's just the one person, it's probably not separately related to the factory and is just some person who buys nectar on their own. Although it's kind of weird that they can afford it given that the people in this factory don't seem very well-paid.

She isn't actually eating anything so she can afford to be one of the first people out of the lunchroom, she guesses, not that it matters since apparently she's already been docked one hundred percent of her day's pay anyway.

Being late from lunch also gets your pay docked! Boring boring boring labor.

Anita's arms are hurting from doing the same repetitive motion for six hours and Anita's feet are hurting from standing.

Okay that is probably just how working in factories is. There is a reason why she doesn't work in a factory. Many reasons. The most depressing thing here is honestly that she doesn't feel like she's learned anything other than that the place appears to be terrible for NO REASON.

She wonders idly how she's even supposed to go to dinner at six given that she doesn't actually have the supervisor's name, or contact information, or a place at which she's supposed to meet him for dinner.

She might just give up if she can't figure it out. He's already planning on chewing her out for being stupid again, not like she actually has a lot to lose in that direction.

At the end of the day the boss of the paint section chews everyone out for being behind goals. Tomorrow they will need to work twice as fast to make up for it. Or they can do overtime! Of course, the overtime will not be paid. If they reached their goals they would not have to work overtime.

Why would anyone do unpaid overtime??? What is the point??? Why does anyone work here???

Then he pulls Anita aside and tells her that she needs to pay them an hour's wages for being so late.

But since it is her first day he will be lenient.

You can actually manage to be paid negative money???

"Thank you, sir," she says, because she can't think of any actually productive lines of questioning about this, given that it is so mind-bogglingly stupid.

INSTEAD, she is going to approach another worker on the way out and ask how long they've worked here.

"Four years," she says.

"Has it always been like this?"

"Yes."

"Do they... actually pay you, most of the time?"

"Yes. If you're quick. And if you work hard enough you eventually become good at being quick."