Next, Please...

"And then he asked to speak to my manager."

"He did not!"

"He did. He said he had been waiting too long and the line wasn't moving fast enough so he wanted to speak to someone to resolve his issues."

"Did you get him someone to speak to?"

"I called Angie."

"Oh no!"

"Oh yes! She was thrilled that someone volunteered."

"Did he realize what was going to happen?"

"Nope, he was pretty smug about it all. Did a so long suckers sort of wave at everyone else waiting."

"Did anyone else decide to join him?"

"No, I think most of them got that it wasn't a good choice."

"Amazing." 

"But I do understand the frustration. I mean the backlog is significant. Unless they figure something out we are never catching up."

"They did that really great vaccination drive. And there was the healthy foods push."

"Sure, and that worked for some of the influx, but...I'm telling you the faster we send them nudges and information on how to make it better they are figuring out how to make it much worse on their own."

"That's true. Do you think we could ever get, like a stoppage in production?"

"You mean like a complete shutdown of the incoming pipeline?" 

"Yeah."

"No, I mean, we have done what we can to increase product lifespan, but they keep figuring out new ways to decrease it in massive amounts."

"It doesn't help that the replacement metric has slowed so much as well."

"That's where it all went south, in my opinion. Not that it slowed, but that Acquisitions and Creations took their eyes off the ball and didn't see it happening. When the replacement metrics halved, I mean...it doesn't take a math genius to realize that we were adding reusables faster than we were reusing them and we didn't need to keep adding new product to the line."

"Well I mean overall there is still more new product entering than old leaving right?"

"Sure, if you look at overall usage. We are still hitting around two new for everyone one retired. But we have stockpiles from the stretches where we had an abundance leave. So if all you were doing was averaging it out, it would seem okay. But they didn't ever check the waiting rooms. They just said, oh our averages are good, keep adding more! No! Don't keep adding more. We are overstocked! And it's not like we can send them back down a level. Well, unless they complain and want to talk to the manager."

"There's always room to start over."

"Eh, well, not really. They've also destroyed so many wild places that there aren't as many lower levels anymore. Not as many animals, not as many insects. Still a lot of bacteria. So I guess there's always that option. But as far as mid level restarts? Not nearly the amount."

"Has Quantity Control mentioned doing a cull?"

"I've heard whispers. Maybe that's why he was so anxious. Maybe he was too close to a door and overheard the same thing. Figured he better try to jump the line before they decided to clear a few billion or so of them out. So now he's with Angie cycling through the bacterium hierarchy. Who knows? Maybe it was a good risk after all."

"What would happen to them all if that's what happens?"

"I don't know...sweep them all into a black hole and pretend not to notice? Quantity Control is a whole other level. Who knows how their reasoning works. Okay, breaks over. Time to get back to the desk. Over 117 Billion served, granted some of them repeatedly, let's see how many we can clear today."

---------------------

My father-in-law used to use this argument as to why reincarnation doesn't make sense. There have been over 100 billion people alive on earth (estimated) and currently there are just over 7 billion. So what happens to all of the rest? How does it even out? Where do they wait until it's their time to be reincarnated? And do they start at the lowest level of lifeform, or at least the lowest we think? Because then that's worse. There are like a quintillion bugs in the world right now. How do they get reincarnated up the life force chain without overwhelming the numbers? 

I think somebody needs to speak to the manager and sort this out!