Neesa stumbled into the room. 

“Laila,” she half shouted, half gasped, leaning against the wall.

Laila started up.

“What did you put in that thermos?” 

Laila said in a very small voice, “the regular can wasn’t there.” 

Neesa moved towards the child. Laila shrank back on the cot. Neesa saw this and relaxed. She knew Laila hadn’t known any better. 

She went to work the next day with white, burning hands. Her skin was peeling off in parts. Still, she had to go to work if she didn’t want to get fired. 

She punched in, bleary-eyed. Miserably she sat down and began to scratch at a plastic doll. In only a few minutes she gave a shout of pain. She stifled it and looked around furtively. She looked at her hand. The fingernail on her index finger had fallen off. 

With a moan she started to work with her middle fingernail. After a few minutes, she gave another tiny shout and stuck her finger in her mouth. Her middle fingernail had fallen off, as well.

The woman on her left side turned to her and said, “are you alright?” 

“Yes,” said Neesa, with tears in the corners of her eyes.  

She noticed the foreman prowling on the other side of the room. She bent her head and started scratching with her ring fingernail. The nail soon came off like the others. She didn’t stop scratching. 

Neesa cried silently as one by one, her nails bent and flaked off. Still, she scratched. Soon she was down to her pinky fingernails. One chipped and peeled off. Then the other. 

She sat blankly in front of the conveyor belt, rubbing at a sticker with the soft part of her thumb. 

She watched the foreman approach. When he was quite close, he made eye contact. She looked away. Panicking, she took off her shoe and began to rub the edge of the heel against the sticker. 

The foreman bent over her shoulder. 

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I thought I would try it like this today,” said Neesa.

The foreman thought for a moment.

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” he said. “But if it begins to interfere with your productivity, I will tell you to stop.”

Neesa nodded. She kept rubbing.

At first, the heel took longer than her nails. But she soon developed a very satisfactory technique that was even quicker. And she didn’t have to have sticker gunk on her nails anymore. 

The ladies, who were at first doubtful of her for using such an unconventional method, soon all adopted it themselves. It was much quicker, after all.

___________________

At least some good has come out of this. Somewhere, somehow, a couple hundred skinny women and children are being paid one percent of minimum wage to get those stickers off. They’re not even going to see half a percent of the millions we’re paying for this screw-up. Where’s it all going? To fat-and-happy middle-men, all up and down the line. But what’s the alternative? Scratch them all off ourselves? No, thank you. Time is money – and this is much quicker, after all.