It’s No Wonder You’d Choose The Chance To Get Shot At

It’s my final day working at a fast food restaurant. All is well for the first few hours, and then the sun goes down and the crazy comes out.

First problem: the cook goes on a break, and just… never comes back. The manager tries to call him and tries calling his emergency contact, and gets nothing. I am told he will be fired for this. Not long ago I’d given him a ride home and heard his sob story about how much he needs the job to take care of his kids. Well. Can’t win them all, right?

We who remain notice a car has been sitting in the lot for a while. The other two are convinced it’s a sex trafficker. I’m more worried someone had a heart attack and died in the car, so I grab a spoon and head out to check. Nope, just someone parked and eating. Crisis averted?

The other worker leaves on schedule, so it is down to the manager and me. She’s not had a chance to lock up the lobby, so people keep wandering in and trying to order. Naturally, we find it impossible to clean the store before closing, so we’ll obviously be here fairly late.

Even with all of this, all is going fairly smoothly. The manager cooks while I take orders, make drinks, smoothies, shakes, etc., pack orders, give them to our honored guests, and issue the standard pleasantries.

And then the concert gets out.

We’d been warned of this, but there’s no way to prepare for an onslaught of hungry people that I lack the stomach to turn away, cars wrapping around the block when we’re short-staffed, and trying to clean an entire store. Several people offer condolences and a few give tips. The manager tries calling corporate to get permission to shut down early, but nothing comes of it. She next tells me to stop taking orders, but I can’t exactly tell people who’ve been waiting for twenty minutes that we won’t take their order while we’re still open, and she won’t do it either, so on we go.

Finally, midnight rolls around and the outside lights shut off. Obviously, people are not thrilled to be turned away, and one car says they ordered mobile and already paid — not accurate, as payment is not taken until we activate the order at the store, but whatever — and insists on being served. The computers have shut down and won’t actually load their order, so we have to look at the tiny screen, memorize what to get, and run back and forth across the store. To make it worse, this last car of my career is full of extremely polite and nice people, so it’s not like we can tell them what direction to f*** off in.

A good half an hour after closing, we finally get their order finished. They give each of us $10 for the trouble, and I wave them off into the wild black yonder with a fake-cheery, “Thank you for choosing [Fast Food Place]!” What a night.

And now I’m off to boot camp. It can’t possibly be as bad.