The first resignation reached Meredith's system a little before two-thirty. It belonged to Nina, who had already planned to seek new work after the holidays. Then Denise sent hers after talking with her sister about childcare and the possibility of accepting the job she had been offered. Hector wrote a short letter, saved a copy, and went back to finish the freight assigned to his dock. In each case the employee stated an effective time of six in the morning, when the shift would end and the active assignments could be handed over.
Earl did not read the letters unless someone asked him to. He refused to help people compose declarations about loyalty, betrayal, or courage because he thought the facts were enough. The resignations described a loss of confidence in leadership, ignored safety and scheduling concerns, and the public treatment of Nolan Avery. Some letters were a paragraph long, others a single sentence, and none suggested that anyone should damage the company or interfere with shipments.
By three, twelve people had sent notices. At four, the count reached seventeen. The building continued operating while they worked through their final responsibilities, which made the decision feel stranger than a walkout on a television news clip. Trucks departed, manifests closed, and the nightly safety checks were completed; the people carrying out those tasks knew they would not be there when the next shift began.
Miles still had his draft open. He had read it enough times to memorize it, and he could picture Karen standing at the kitchen counter in the morning when he told her what he had chosen. At four-twenty he went back to his official reduction notice and read the line about organizational flexibility. The phrase had comforted him when he first saw it because it sounded temporary, as if flexibility itself were a kind of job security.
Now he understood that the document had described a decision the company intended to make after it extracted the last weeks of holiday labor from him. Nolan had warned that the automation could not operate safely without experienced judgment, and Blair had dismissed him rather than examine the warning. Miles did not know whether leaving would improve his circumstances. He knew only that staying did not offer the protection he had been pretending it offered.
Cody was the eighteenth employee to resign. He had called a former classmate who worked at a packaging firm and learned that openings might become available after the new year. It was a possibility, not a job, and he told Earl he was frightened. Earl said he was frightened too, and they shared a brief laugh at the discovery that courage was not the same as confidence.