Fast
by Mike—Age 21—Bowling Green, KY
Nobody told me it’d be like this, my first job. Piddling coworkers sloshing bits of meat and tear drops of grease into the air and into your skin. The indolent managers hunched over trashcans hacking pieces of black lung and sucking down cigarettes.
My coworker, Paul, arrives in the backdoor”¦late again. He’s high again, his eyes sag to the floor, shirt untucked, shoes untied. He stumbles to the grill and gets to work. He giggles at the sizzle of rectangle shaped patties, dancing in the puddles. His lethargic arms shake and he drops one on the floor.
“Chili meat!” he announces to me.
I watch as the meat is discarded into a vat of boiling grease along with the other dropped meat of the day. It was to become someone’s meaty chili. I began to wonder where the beans came from.
The shirt they gave me was already stained in a tie-dye mess of grease. It was two sizes too small, but it was all they had. I now knew why I was hired before I had my interview. Paul tosses a pickle into the fryer and watches it sizzle. He then fishes it out and munches on it.
“Totally worth it bro,” he says, and laughs, then continues to sling
grease as far as possible.
Tammy, my manager, stinking of smoke, runs outside to quell a fight. A coworker has nearly pulled a knife on a customer. Needless to say he’s fired. It’s always easier with people like Paul and him to work with; you always seem more capable.
I am soon dubbed the “˜Grill Master’, and handed the dirty spatula. I perfected the art, never dropping the patties, never flattening them, and never sloshing grease on unsuspecting employees.
“Mike, could you please press the spatula down on the patties, they’re too big.” Tammy asks.
“Yeah, but why would I do that?”
“We can’t wrap them in the foil.”
I quit after four months. I was proud of the money, but suppressing the memories of the place was my first full time job.
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