Avodah

Avodah is a thirteen-year-old boy with blue eyes and blond hair, wearing a light blue shirt with pants held up by blue suspenders. Avodah managed to convince his father to let him quit school and start working right away.

Avodah works for a cooperative without a contract and insurance, serving as a "gatekeeper" for a soccer stadium. His job is to check the cars that pass by, take the name and identify the vehicle, and let through those who have authorization. He is also responsible for receiving packages and distributing the stadium keys as needed.

Avodah has only been working at the stadium for two days, and today is his first day alone, unprepared and in a panic. He stops the cars, rushes out of his booth to ask the driver's name, then raises the boom barrier. He runs back and forth to record the name and time of entry on the computer, but often a second car passes while the boom barrier is up. Many stadium employees walk by without stopping to leave their names, and others enter and take keys without permission, assuming that Avodah recognizes their names.

Avodah's task is to raise the boom barrier for cars without stopping them and, based on the person's face and the car brand, to recognize and record each exit on the computer. Occasionally, Avodah manages to shout and ask for people's names before they leave, but only a few stop, as if everyone assumes that Avodah should recognize everyone's face and name in two days.

Avodah's breaking point came when he found himself with a line of people, with cars entering and exiting without permission. While people were asking for directions and others were sifting through a hundred stadium keys without stating their name or which keys they were taking, all the while Avodah was receiving a phone call.

Exhausted and on the verge of tears, Avodah is sitting at the computer inside his booth, looking out the window at the boom barrier and taking deep breaths to relieve the tension, while on the screen of the monitor is an Excel sheet with hundreds of missing data; some are marked as having entered three times without ever leaving, some only have their car marked, and others only their exit.

The boom barrier is somewhat comical to look at; the device looks like a duck with two black eyes on the sides and a yellow beak from which the barrier extends.

Avodah has made friends with someone from the kitchens; a lively woman, talking to her gives the impression of dealing with a unionist. This woman has repeatedly emphasized to Avodah to be careful when he will receive the contract because the cooperative he works for is horrible.

Everyone in this environment seems to speak ill, behind the backs, of all other colleagues. Everyone has told Avodah not to trust anyone, not to talk, and not to expose himself.

On his first day alone, Avodah must work twelve hours because his colleague is late, after having worked the previous day when it was supposed to be a day off. Avodah hasn't eaten for two days and has slept only five hours, having just enough time to go home, sleep, and head back to work.

In the booth where Avodah is located, where there is the button to lift the boom barrier, the computer, the keys, and the area to deposit packages (and where he keeps the phone he must use to call the person concerned every time he receives a package), there is a thick layer of cardboard under the chair covering a hole. From running in and out of the booth to ask for names, Avodah has started to bend the cardboard under the weight of his steps, risking breaking through and falling in at any moment.

Avodah begins to mentally vent towards the people who pass without leaving their name or who just greet with a smile while speeding by without stopping, imagining them having some accident, tripping, or crashing into a truck while crossing the street. For Avodah, it's an outlet, to not think about the mess he's making with the data on the Excel sheet, trying not to have a panic attack.

Avodah blames himself, stating he is not capable of doing such a simple job, for his inability to recognize faces, remember names, and stop all passersby. He considers himself stupid.

The thing Avodah's colleagues have told him to pay the most attention to is never to ask for the name and never to stop a specific person, the owner of the stadium. Avodah must always know whether he is inside or outside the stadium and, most importantly: never to mark it down. But Avodah not only does not remember the name and face of the person in question, he only knows that his car is a luxury one.

[ Avodah is the gatekeeper who manages the keys of the soccer stadium, recording the entry and exit of every person who enters the stadium courtyard, receives packages, gives directions, and makes calls. He works inside a booth, in front of a computer, sitting on a chair placed over a hole covered with a patch made of a layer of solid cardboard, where he keeps a lot of notes, keys, and confusing annotations; from inside the booth, he has a button to raise the barrier to let cars pass. Avodah is panicking and is terrible at his job despite trying to do the best he can, he lacks the preparation, doesn't know the keys by heart, and has trouble with people's names. He has a short memory and, to avoid a panic attack, he vents by imagining horrible, bloody, sadistic, and gory scenarios towards anyone who makes his job more difficult than necessary. Like those who pass without stopping to leave their name. ]