She Was Out Cold

I work at a coffee shop, and the owners are terribly cheap. We have an air conditioning system that breaks down every year, and this year is no exception. We are in the middle of July and it’s blazing hot outside. Indoors, we only have two small fans set up on either side of the store as an attempt to keep things cool. Workers regularly dart to the back to get a drink of water, since we aren’t allowed to keep a drink on us in the front.

One of my coworkers who was on deli goes into the back for a drink; I agree to cover her while she is gone. Usually, people only take a minute for a drink of water, but after almost ten minutes she still isn’t back. Once there is a break in food orders, I go look for her. I search all over the place, including outside, in the washrooms, and even in the walk-in-freezer, and she is nowhere to be found. I have another food order, so I give up looking for the time being.

A little bit later, I need to grab some butter from the fridge, which is large, but not a walk-in. I open the door and find my coworker sitting in it, head between her knees.

Turns out, she was working deli, which has a toaster that was radiating heat. The heat from the toaster, combined with the already sweltering heat from the weather, overwhelmed her and gave her heat exhaustion. So, she went to “get a drink of water,” and sat in the fridge to try and cool herself down. While in the fridge, she felt nauseous and dizzy and put her head down to help herself get over the feeling.

However, when I open the door, I don’t realize any of that information and think I have just stumbled upon a corpse that was stuffed in the fridge. I let out such a loud shriek that all of my coworkers come sprinting over to see what is wrong. When we have all figured out what happened, they laugh their tails off at me for being scared.

They now frequently hide in the fridge and jump out at me. On the bright side, because of the incident, our owners have finally paid to fix the air conditioning, which has made working in the summer much more bearable.