Fast food beasts

This archived article was written by: Janine Thompson

Sitting in my history class on an extremely eventless Tuesday, I may have heard one comment from my professor that I couldn’t have agreed with more. “I do believe that everyone should work six months as a Wal-Mart worker and a waitress, for it isn’t until you serve people that you understand their true natures.” While Professor Susan Neel’s comment was a bit out of nowhere, it pulled me out of my sleep deprived stimulated blackout, and assured me that I am not the only person on this planet staring at people with a blank look of disgust plastered to my forehead. While this comment stuck with me, as I thought, it isn’t just the serving of people that helps one to understand the human species, it is the working with and babysitting of them that really makes it all click.
In the past months, I have found that my tolerance has quickly dwindled for those who walk this Earth, for the pure ignorance that paralyzes their body is enough to make me stick my head in the fryer of the local burger joint. Taking on a management position, I never realized what I was in for, and how quickly I would learn the ways of the walkers, the slackers, the money grubbing thieves and the outright drug addicts, and the obese customers who are attracted to fast food like fat kids to cake.
While it only took a week of managing to figure out the shallowness of each person surrounding me, it didn’t occur to me until nearly a year and half later how discretely they can take over your life, your job and sanity with their ridiculous natures and pity party mind sets. The ones that tend to blow my mind the most are the snot nosed teenage mindset middle agers that have set their life in stone to travel from fast food to fast food job, in order to bring in the money to bring in the drugs. It is ridiculous to me that these are inevitably the ones who feel their course has been unfairly set by the burger Gods to bring them a poor, greasy, doubt ridden life to mock them forever. These are the people who when you drive up to the window, you thank God they are not in the kitchen because of their missing teeth and drawling personality.
Although I feel no pity for those whose lives are grease ridden and moneyless, it is the individuals whose work ethic is close to zilch that I feel need to have their heads turned through the broilers of life, in order to make them understand the fiery hell that awaits them outside of the “push, pull” door signs. How is it someone can mosey into a job and feel that they have been lodged into the French fry hell that is someone else’s fault. It is when they walk their happy tails out in the middle of rushes that my jaw drops and my brain cells explode. It is extremely hard to imagine where quitting a job due to a slight disagreement, or a pathetic personality is a way of life.
While it seems to me that I have learned more about people through working with them, the ones I serve take quite a toll on my sanity also. It is the ones who come through on a daily basis asking for that king-size meal to fill their shortening-plastered fat cells due to their incapableness to cook. While it really doesn’t matter to me whether they spend every red sent on a burger that has been sitting for 15 minutes, it is the people who look at me as if I am the ignorant, pathetic one for having to serve their perfect selves. Although this is an easy brush off when I see them rolling through Wal-Mart on the automatic carts, it is the ones who find themselves the elitist who find any reason to make my life more difficult. It is the people who will count absolutely every last cent compared to the menu boards, or those who feel that if an unwanted onion touches their sandwich, they may keel over due to a coronary from their dislike of the ogre like vegetable. This is where I have really found myself baffled at human nature. With a lousy job, I have found people to be ignorant, greedy, inconsiderate animals awaiting their cow in a wrapper.
So there it is. While it may be hard to believe the true nature of the beasts you see sitting next to you, it takes one day to figure out their pathetic natures and personalities. If it seems ridiculous, it really is, but it is without a doubt, the complete truth.