The default alarm tone from the iPhone 4 sounded before dawn. Dutiful Dylan awoke in his beige room, and, without waking any of his sleeping companions, put on his thrift-store athleisure and went for a brisk walk. By seven, he had already reached half his daily goal of twenty thousand steps.
After a hurried breakfast of Sunbest 100% Whole Grain Quick Oats, he checked his Ally Invest portfolio. Even without matching contributions from his employer, Dylan’s weekly investment of twenty five dollars—made possible by his decision to forego coffee, video games, and streaming entertainment—was starting to pay off. He already owned fifty shares of NVDA. Before setting out he made sure to download the newest episode of his favorite podcasts without using data.
The sun had barely begun to rise when Dylan found himself observing the posted speed limit in his 2005 Kia Sedona on his way to the ride-share lot. Last month Allstate had informed him that his insurance bill was going down—again. This was thanks to his early and enthusiastic adoption of Drivewise, an app that monitored his overall speed, acceleration, braking, and the time during which he drove. By just beating the morning rush hour on a consistent basis, which substantially lowered his risk profile in the algorithm, he had managed to unlock the next tier, which dropped his annual premium by eight dollars and seven cents.
The carpool always featured a mix of characters, some of whom were what one would call “rough customers.” Splitting the trip to the strip mall where he worked—often with people between vehicles or unable to drive due to suspended licenses—technically made for a longer commute, but it enabled Dylan to save seventy five cents a day in gas.
Today Dylan was seated in the back seat next to a clerk at the cannabis dispensary near his own place of employment.
“Do you want a hit of this?” the clerk asked.
“I don’t vape,” said Dylan.
“No worries,” said his companion, exhaling purple smoke. “By the way, did you see the Tiges last night?”
“I don’t pay for streaming services,” the abstemious young man replied.
“Oh man, me neither,” said his companion. “Usually I just bet on ’em.”
Dylan sighed. “I don’t use betting apps.”
The clerk shrugged before turning to Dylan with his new Samsung phone. On the screen was a video that featured impure images.
“I’ve never gone in for that sort of thing,” said Dylan.
“But don’t the app show ’em to you?”
“I use a screen-time app that also monitors content,” Dylan replied.
His companion said nothing. Their conversation was over. Dylan put in his earphones, a pair compatible with his vintage iPhone which he had been given during a flight he had taken three years ago. He spent the rest of the drive listening to a Dave Ramsay podcast at one and a half speed.
When they arrived at the strip mall, Dylan paid the driver in cash and said goodbye to his companions. As he opened the door, he heard one of his companions mutter something inaudible. The rest of the car’s occupants laughed.
I am afraid that his fellow ridesharers did not understand our Dylan. Oh, he had his faults to be sure. He sometimes failed to reach his step goal. Then there were his bouts of extravagance. On weekends he occasionally enjoyed a beer after mowing his lawn. He had once taken his (now-ex) girlfriend to a restaurant. Until recently he had sometimes found himself tempted to purchase a breakfast sandwich at a drive-through on the way to the carpool pool lot.
Worst of all, it must be admitted that Dylan was hopelessly addicted to nicotine pouches. He simply could not see a way toward meeting all of his obligations without the cheap, instantaneous bursts of energy they provided. Worse still, he was something of a connoisseur. He refused to purchase Velo or Rogue to subscribe to an even cheaper mail-order pouch service such as Alp and insisted only upon Zyn, with its pleasingly dry mouthfeel. He half-feared that one day it would be his ruin.
I have enumerated these credits and debits, as it were, simply because it should be clear to readers that, whatever could be said of Dylan in the future, he was not yet a model Dollar Tree employee. But already there were signs that pointed to his future success. He worked assiduously. He maintained an adequate savings balance. He had no hobbies save for exercise and listening to free audiobooks from the public library.
And now that I have introduced you to him with this brief sketch, dear reader, allow me to continue relating his adventures.
✥ ✥ ✥
As usual, Dutiful Dylan arrived at Dollar Tree half an hour before his shift was set to begin. Instead of wasting this time watching TikTok in the break room like the rest of the employees, he walked laps around the table.
The first customer arrived almost exactly at the stroke of nine. A gaunt haggard-looking man, he purchased five two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew. He paid for the first of these four with a debit card which Dylan recognized as having been issued by a company that allowed people like him to “donate” their blood plasma in exchange for small amounts of money. In addition to these sums, repeat donors received points which could be redeemed for small rewards or five-dollar credits.
“I go to BioLife,” Dylan said cheerfully, by way of conversation. “Looking forward to that monthly donation bonus!”
The customer said nothing in reply but reached for what Dylan recognized as a Capital One Platinum card.
“I had one of those years ago,” he said. “The rewards structure for this card is not all that great.”
On three successive tap attempts the card was declined.
Inwardly Dylan sighed. It was not that he disapproved of credit cards of course. He had two accounts himself, carefully selected after consulting Nerd Wallet. At the end of each month, he always paid his balance. When his points reached a certain threshold, he always chose to receive a statement credit.
The customer left with only four of the bottles of Mountain Dew.
The rest of Dylan’s morning shift was uneventful. During his lunch break he ate a microwaved grain and veggie bowl that he had prepared the previous evening in a large batch. At five o’clock, as he was preparing to meet the afternoon carpool, one of his colleagues approached. This was Sophia, an attractive young woman who sometimes listened to Dylan discuss personal finance and time management—though, curiously, she never seemed interested in adopting any of his strategies.
“Hey, Dylan,” Sophia said.
Dylan smiled. For some reason that he could not quite articulate he liked Sophia.
“Hello, Sophia.”
“We’re gonna go grab some drinks at O’Flannagan’s. Wanna come?”
“I don’t go to bars. They’re a waste of money.”
“But it’s five-dollar shots and tots tonight. Come on, I’ll pay.”
“I’m sorry, Sophia,” he said, “but I can’t. I have class tonight.”
“Can’t you skip?”
Needless to say, such a course of action unthinkable to Dylan. Seeing the carpool vehicle approach, he bid Sophia goodbye.
“Next time, okay?” she said.
But Dylan had already closed the door of the Toyota.
✥ ✥ ✥
Every weekday evening Dutiful Dylan went to Oakbridgecrest Valley Community College, where he was earning an Associate of Science in Management Science degree. This quarter Dylan was taking Managerial Auditing 201. It was the course he had enjoyed most so far. An assiduous learner, he made sure to take careful notes on the PowerPoint slides even though the professor always uploaded them to the online learning module and the examinations were open book.
During the usual break, Dylan was fond of going for walks around the small exurban campus, which enabled him to get more steps. Sometimes, as he was making his way back to the classroom, he would find himself in conversation with Logan and Samantha, two of his fellow students. Logan and Samantha were fond of talking about politics.
“It’s a conspiracy,” he overheard Logan say one evening.
“It’s not a conspiracy,” Samantha said. “It’s just, like, the system. It’s fucked. Ask Dylan, he works at Dollar Tree.”
“Ask me what?” Dylan replied warmly. While he did not agree with either of them about most issues, he enjoyed talking with his fellow students.
“How much do you make?” said Samantha.
“I make eleven seventy-three an hour,” Dylan replied.
“How much is your rent?”
“Nineteen-hundred split four ways?”
“I thought you lived in a duplex.”
“I do.”
“But how do you fit that many guys in there?”
“I own the duplex,” Dylan explained. His voice was somewhat sheepish, but a careful observer would not have missed the faint note of pride in his voice.
“How did you manage that?” Samantha asked.
Dylan then explained how he had begun dreaming of owning his own duplex when he was a teenager. After carefully saving the money he made from umpiring youth baseball games and working as a lifeguard—most of which he had invested in certificates of deposit—he had taken out a small mortgage to purchase the unit
“Then why have you got tenants?”
“To save money.”
“Where do you guys sleep?” asked Logan.
“We have bunk beds. We also have a communal kitchen where we cook grain and veggie bowls to save on lunches.”
“What do you do if a girl comes over?” asked Samantha.
“We don’t. I don’t allow it. Having overnight guests voids their rental agreements.”
“But what if you wanna, you know,” said Logan, making a somewhat rude gesture.
Before Dylan could answer, he noticed that the professor had already moved back to the head of the classroom.
This was the last time he had a conversation with Logan and Samantha.
✥ ✥ ✥
One bright spring morning, Dutiful Dylan rose as usual at four. Passing from the bunk area to the living and dining room, he noticed that two of his newest tenants were still awake. They two had stayed up all night watching a soccer broadcast. On the table were some empty cans of beer and some pizza boxes. Apparently at some point after Dylan had retired at nine the evening before they had ordered delivery.
“Hey, guys,” Dylan said. “Just a reminder that you are free to use the communal table, but it needs to be cleared before the next meal.”
“We forgot,” one of them said. He did not look at his landlord.
“Thanks, guys,” he said. “I’ll take care of it this time.”
Today Dylan was feeling generous. He was bursting with energy. Today he was going for a run, not a walk, and then he was going to drive by himself all the way to Dollar Tree, where he had now been employed for two years. Doing so while maintaining his low-risk score would of course require him to arrive well before the morning shift began, but he intended to spend those extra hours listening to a biography of Steve Jobs. That was not all. Two other things would be different that day. The first was that he would be wearing a suit, one that he had purchased from an online retailer using his Capital One Venture X Rewards card. The second was that he would be carrying a briefcase.
After arriving in pitch dark, Dylan found it difficult to concentrate on his audiobook. The minutes passed like hours. At last the time came for him to enter the store, and he was barely able to contain his excitement when, at a quarter to nine, the manager finally arrived.
“Hello, Suzanne!” he said, offering her his hand.
Suzanne looked at him uncertainly while his hand remained suspended awkwardly near her ample torso.
“Morning,” she said, taking a sip from a to-go coffee cup.
Dylan opened the leather briefcase and handed her a piece of paper.
“What’s that?”
“It’s my résumé.”
The manager stared at him blankly. This response surprised him. He had typed the résumé carefully in Google Docs, run it through ChatGPT and Grammarly, helpfully incorporated their feedback. Then he had printed it on thirty-two-pound weight cream-colored paper.
Suzanne reluctantly accepted the piece of paper and attempted to fold it before rolling it up and placing it in the back pocket of her jeans.
“Is there anything else I can do for you today?” Dylan asked her.
“Nope.”
✥ ✥ ✥
Forty years later, after his retirement from Dollar Tree, Dutiful Dylan would look back fondly on those early years. While he had not been given the assistant manager position he had hoped for on that long-ago spring day (for some reason it had gone to Sophia, who continued to invite him to the bar after work to no avail), he had at least put himself out there. In fact, promotion had come slowly. He had been one of the longest-tenured cashiers in the store’s history with his wages rising gradually from eleven seventy-three to fifteen sixty-four an hour over the course of his first decade with the company. At the age of thirty five, he had been named assistant manager, which brought his hourly earnings up to eighteen dollars. Eight years later, he was promoted to store manager. This brought him what he had always hoped to achieve: a dollar-for-dollar matching 401(k) plan, which, over the course of the next few years, thanks to his continued avoidance of frivolous purchases, enabled his portfolio to expand, if not quite exponentially than certainly at a higher rate than it would done otherwise. Meanwhile, he had bought a house, a small ranch with an above-ground swimming pool. Renting out the basement to tenants (whose credit scores he screened carefully) brought him additional income. In 2047, he had taken a vacation to Trinidad, where he stayed at a budget-friendly hotel that allowed guests to do their own cooking; two years later, he had gone on yet another, slightly less frugal trip, this time to the famed resort city of Frankenmuth, Michigan. He had successfully kicked his Zyn habit. The last time he had used a pouch was at Sophia’s wedding. To avoid another unnecessary subscription, he always read the Wall Street Journal at the public library.
One morning after finishing his usual walk Dylan had himself driven to the nearest Walmart location, where store-brand Metamucil was eight cents cheaper than at Dollar Tree. In the front of the store he was greeted by a man about his age. He felt that he recognized him somehow.
“Dylan, is that you?” the man asked.
Then it clicked. The man (whose nametag read “JAYDEN”) was one of his old coworkers from the early days at Dollar Tree. Dylan then recalled how when the store was quiet Jayden had frequently taken cigarette breaks. Occasionally he had missed a shift without calling in, and on at least one occasion he had shared a meme that compared Dollar Tree and similar retailers to nineteenth-century company towns.
“Hi, Jayden, it’s been so long,” Dylan said. “What have you been up to?”
“I’m just greetin’ here,” Jayden said. “One job the robots ain’t took, right?”
Dylan excused himself with a smile and made his way to the pharmacy aisle, where he took out his phone to compare the price with Dollar Tree once. After verifying his projected savings with a price checker app, Dylan walked to the self-checkout kiosk at the front of the store. After scanning and paying for his purchases, he saw that the touchscreen was inviting him to take part in a customer survey. Carefully he surveyed the store and reflected on his experience. After hesitating for a moment, he gave the location a perfect rating for cleanliness. Jayden received a three out of five. His help had been, after all, average.
