The rest of Nate’s day was relatively uneventful. Well, less eventful than getting an anonymous handjob from one of his coworkers at least.
Nate left the showers and discovered his cohorts had some seriously impressive industrial fur dryers. He only had to stand under the machine for a fraction of a second to fully dry off. It did leave his mane looking a bit more unkempt than usual though.
He walked back over to the row of lockers and popped one open at random. The “B” jumpsuits fit him marginally better now, but he was still a bit too tall for them. It still felt weird to Nate that he didn’t have a locker with his number on it. He was just going to be one of many short and stout donkeys who could share clothes. Paper Corp might have had an old Chronivac, but some of this had to be a cost cutting measure too, right?
Lunch was good! Nate couldn’t recall ever having a carrot curry before, but his tail wouldn’t hold still as he ate it. Even his fellow beasts picked up on it. He got a few good ribbings from his coworkers. It seemed that he was going to be “Newbie” to them at least until his fur came in.
Five wasn’t able to get a new assignment for him, so Nate was back on trash duty. His supervisor helped him out for the first floor, but then clopped off to attend to other things when he saw Nate hadn’t forgotten everything overnight.
The job was pretty monotonous. Nate was expecting it to give him a lot of time to think. Instead, he just found his train of thought drifting off into a pleasant haze. Empty trash can, push cart, empty trash can, change floors. It was a nice rote habit. He hardly even noticed when he clopped into his old building.
“Hey, Nate’s back!” Clint waved, watching Nate clop onto the floor.
Dan poked his head up from his cubical, “Woah, hey, you weren’t kidding Clint. He really is turning into a donkey!”
Clint, Dan, and Eric all rushed over to say hello. Nate couldn’t help but feel a bit flustered by all the attention. They kept wanting to take pictures of his changes.
“How are the hooves treating you?” Eric asked curiously, taking a full body snapshot of Nate.
“Haw, can’t complain sir.” Nate responded back with some heavily accented English.
“Glad to hear it!” Dan patted him on the back.
Nate’s tail had stopped swishing back and forth. What he had meant to say was, “They’re nice but can get a little slippery on tile floors.” What came out was literally the corporate policy he had sat through this morning. Donkeys were not to complain to standard Paper Corp staff. Nate literally couldn’t complain to them.
“So you’re going to be like this for three years?” Clint held up one of his ears curiously, “What’s with the tag?” He flicked Nate’s ID tag.
“Hee haw! Careful sir.” Nate reached up, rubbing the base of his ear, “I’m Donkey One Seventeen.” He straightened the tag out.
“Wow, really?” Clint tilted his head, “Should we call you that instead of Nate?”
“Yes please.” Nate nodded his head. If they needed anything cleaned up on their floor, all they had to do was dial three on any corporate phone.
“Well alright One Seventeen.” Dan took one last selfie with Nate. “We should probably get back to work.”
“Of course sir.” Nate nodded again. He was about to get back to work himself when he added, “If you need anything else, just dial three on your phone and one of us can be up in a jiffy.”
Eric laughed, “Now we know how to ask for you by number apparently.”
Nate’s friends went back to work. He stood there awkwardly by his push cart for a moment. That was… weird. He kept calling his friends sir. He didn’t dwell on it for too long though, he had a job to do.
That evening Nate skipped the shower and headed straight towards dinner. The donkey’s cafeteria was serving some really nice warm grain salad. It was old hat to the donkeys who worked here, but he was enjoying getting to try all the new donkey food. The table he had sat down at eagerly gave him dressing suggestions and pairing tips.
Nate was still trying to figure out how his fellow donkeys socialized and hung out during their off hours. He had initially suspected all the tall donkeys might hang out at one table, and all the generic ones would sit off on their own, but things were pretty mixed up. He started to noticed that sometimes numbers that were close to each other would hang out. Maybe they were all from the same year of recruits?
After dinner he got pulled into a card game with two tall donkeys and a generic one. They were Forty, Thirty Seven, and Eighty Nine respectively. Forty was a tall donkey, and his tag was green, but if he was the same donkey from the shower this morning he wasn’t showing any sign of it at all.
Everyone seemed to have their preferred way of relaxing after work. Some donkeys were watching TV, others were braying with one another, and a few were apparently getting caught up on their corporate trainings.
Everyone was still wearing their corporate jumpsuit. Well, for the most part. There didn’t seem to be any casual clothing available to them, but a few donkeys had tried to spruce up or customize their appearance. One had a ribbon tied onto his mane, another had apparently found some hair jell, and some-donk had even managed to find an old pair of glasses to balance on his muzzle. They didn’t appear to have lenses.
Others had taken the end of their work day as an excuse to take off their uniform and change into… nothing. There were at least a few donkeys within Nate’s line of sight that were just clopping around in their fur. A few of them were doing uh- More than just clopping around naked.
One Seventeen shifted on his seat, adjusting his gaze away from one particular display in the corner. “Do uh… Guys always suck each other off after work?”
Thirty Seven played a card, “Haw? Oh- We don’t have a ton much else to do?” He chuckled.
“What do you think we’re playing for?” Eighty Nine brayed in amusement.
One Seventeen just stared at them, “Are you serious?”
Forty beamed, “What happened to wanting to return the favor One Seventeen?”
One Seventeen stammered, “Oh- oh man, it was you this morning!” His face went flush.
The tall donkey tossed down a card, “Winner gets to be on top. I’m sure you can tell we’re a competitive bunch.” He flicked his ear, “You didn’t check my tag?”
“It was steamy, and uh- I was distracted.” One Seventeen blushed.
“Hee haw, you gotta check who you’re talking to Newbie.” Eighty Nine grinned.
The three spent the rest of the game teaching Nate the finer points of spotting someone’s number. There were apparently all sorts of subtle points he had been missing up until now. It was considered polite to flick your ears forward when you greeted someone, and the color codings all aligned with the person’s last digit. Nate had a purple tag, which meant anyone else with a purple tag had a number that ended in seven. If you could see the three or seventeen at the front of the tag, you could infer whether or not you were talking to Thirty Seven or Nate.
Interestingly enough, the body types seemed completely unrelated. Everyone shared their story of Mr. Smith assigning their form for the most arbitrary reasons. During Thirty Seven’s year the man working the Chronivac machine was just cycling between the three forms. When people realized what was going on, everyone towards the end of the line kept shifting in place trying to get their preferred form.
“Haw, Mr. Smith has been working here that long?” Nate brayed curiously.
They all gave him a bit of a confused look. “I don’t think it was literally the same Mr. Smith.” Thirty Seven scratched his ear.
“Do… a lot of Mr. Smiths work here?” One Seventeen’s ears twitched.
Forty laughed, starting to pack the cards up, “Oh! He’s still new.” He gave a sympathetic bucktoothed grin, “We can’t tell people apart very well One Seventeen. We just call any authority figures Mr. Smith.”
Nate blinked, “Oh.” His ears went down sheepishly.
“It’s alright. They all get it.” Forty got up from the table, “Come on, I think it’s time we turn in.”
One Seventeen almost shot up from the table. “Haw! Oh jeez, turn in turn in, or-“
Eighty Nine laughed, “We were missing with you Newbie. Come on.”
Thirty Seven grinned, “No we weren’t, but it’s late.”
They all undressed and headed back to the dorms. Nate tried really hard to keep his arms by his sides. The sleeping accommodations reminded One Seventeen vaguely of a military barracks from the movies. There were lots of cots all laid out in a row. They were missing the telltale trunk at the end though. One Seventeen was starting to pick up on the Donkeys having a distinct lack of personal spaces.
“Which one’s mine?” One Seventeen’s ears twitched curiously.
He got that look from the card donkeys again. “Doesn’t matter.” Thirty Seven shrugged. As a demonstration, he clopped to the nearest cot and laid down.
“Night guys.” Eighty Nine waved, clopping up to another cot. This one already had some-beast laying in it, but that didn’t stop Eighty Nine from hopping in. He wasn’t the only person who had doubled up it seems. Were there even enough beds to go around?
Haw, One Seventeen missed his apartment again.