“Good morning.”
“It was until I saw lawyers.”
One attorney smiled.
The other did not.
The woman gestured toward the chair across from her.
“Sit.”
The single father remained standing.
“What is this?”
“An hour.”
“You said you wanted an hour.”
“I did.”
“You also said not to come to the warehouse.”
“I did.”
“So naturally you came to the warehouse instead.”
The technical executive tried unsuccessfully not to smile.
The woman said:
“You weren’t answering your phone.”
The father checked.
Three missed calls.
He had kept the device silent during school drop-off.
“That doesn’t mean you arrive at my job.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
She studied him.
He continued:
“I need this job.”
“I know.”
“I cannot have people here thinking I’m interviewing with another company during scheduled hours.”
“Then we will make sure your employer is compensated for your time.”
The father’s face hardened.
“No.”
The woman paused.
“What?”
“You don’t buy an hour of me from somebody else.”
Silence.
The supervisor, who had followed him inside, suddenly became deeply interested in the safety poster.
The woman leaned back.
Then nodded once.
“You’re right.”
The father expected argument.
Instead she asked:
“Will you give me an hour?”
That was different.
He looked toward his supervisor.
The man shrugged.
“I can cover receiving for an hour.”
The father stared.
“You hate receiving.”
“I also want to know why two lawyers came here because you changed somebody’s battery.”
“It wasn’t the battery.”
“See? Already interesting.”
The father sighed.
Then looked toward the woman.
“One hour.”
She smiled.
“Thank you.”
The supervisor left.
The door closed.
The woman turned the laptop.
A map filled the screen.
Red dots everywhere.
“Those are vehicles?”
“Disabled vehicles.”
“How many?”
“Two hundred eighteen as of seven-thirty.”
The father stepped closer despite himself.
“What platform?”
The technical executive answered.
“Medium-duty hybrid delivery chassis.”
“Generation?”
“Four.”
“Controller supplier?”
The man named the company.
The father’s face changed.
The woman noticed immediately.
“You know them.”
The father did not answer.
The technical executive continued:
“Common fault appears to involve drive-control communication interruption.”
“Temperature?”
“Correlation unclear.”
“Ambient?”
“Failures cluster after extended operation.”
“Restart behavior?”
“Intermittent.”
The father’s eyes moved over the data.
“What happens after twenty minutes cool-down?”
The technical executive stared.
“Some return.”
“How many?”
“About forty percent.”
The father leaned toward the screen.
“Then stop calling it communication failure.”
“What?”
“It’s not communication.”
The engineer frowned.
“Diagnostics say—”
“Diagnostics tell you where the system notices failure.”
“Not where failure begins.”
The room became quiet.
The father pointed.
“What load before shutdown?”
The technical executive opened another graph.
The father studied it.