by Alice Bello
~*~
McDonald’s was bombarded with customers, and not the usual Saturday night crowd. This was pure chaos and mayhem, and at first Lucy was glad for it. The busier it was, the faster the time would fly by. But her assignment tonight (the grill) had her stuck over a hundred patties of scorched meat, and her hands and arms got burnt by the overly sizzling grease.
When it’s really busy, management will turn up the heat on the grill—to hell with corporate’s rules and regulations for the cooking of their prized beef patties. Management just wanted the burgers done and out the door with the customer.
End of story.
About an hour into this hot, smelly mess of special meat, she was coated with sweat and grease, and she had all sorts of tiny red welts all over her arms.
“Lucy!” Greg, her night shift manager yelled, though he was standing right beside her.
She looked up at him unenthusiastically—she no longer jumped in surprise at his all-too-often sudden outbursts. “Yeah, Greg?”
Greg was on the cusp of turning thirty, his hair was starting to recede, and he always looked like he was constipated. “Go to the cooler and get two containers of the Special Sauce...” He plucked the spatula from her hand. “I’ll watch the grill.”
“Okay.” She turned and started to walk away when Greg hollered again.
“Grab a bag of sandwich lettuce too.”
She nodded her head and waved that she’d heard him, but she didn’t bother to look back at him. She stayed close to the wall as she navigated further back into the bowels of the fast food restaurant. Twenty-three workers ran around like computer animated chickens with their heads chopped off, with no rhyme or reason, and just barely missed running right into each other.
She yanked open the cooler door, almost getting bowled over by an acne pocked kid named Gibson, and then slipped into the cool, clammy embrace of the walk-in cooler. If it wasn’t for the smell—an overtaxed refrigeration unit, fresh and rotting vegetables and fruits, the grease that coated every square inch of the store, and of course the mildew of refrigeration moistened cardboard boxes—she would enjoy the temperature dip.
Plus the unit itself made a white noise that blocked out all other noises. So it was kind of peaceful.
She stood there for a lovely moment and let the cold envelope her—and forgot that she was this Lucy now, and let a flash of her old life, the old radiant and amazing Lucy, warm her. She tried not to take a breath. This lasted for exactly ten seconds, and then she had to take one. That alone snapped her back to reality, and she started to move toward the shelves she needed to pull stock from.
First the bag of leaf lettuce. In most McDonald’s stores even the lettuce is pre-shredded and the tomatoes pre-sliced. All so everything about the burgers you buy are exactly like the burgers you get in any other McDonald’s, anywhere you go.
Gram had said it’s called the Socialization of America. That it’s a real thing, and that’s why it’s taught in almost every college in the land. But since she wasn’t going to college... or anywhere else... she’d decided not to give the lettuce and tomatoes at McDonalds much thought.
The large plastic tubs of Special Sauce were only around five pounds apiece, yet they were not only physically cumbersome, but always rather slick and hard to hold onto.
She set down the bag of lettuce, picked up two jars of sauce—arranging them so her arms and her chest were holding them snugly in a pincer—and then grabbed the lettuce again. She pushed against the cooler door, yet it didn’t give a bit.
Nothing unusual. The door was notorious for sticking. So she put some muscle into pushing against it, but it still wouldn’t budge.
Shit! I’m so not getting trapped in the walk in cooler on my freaking birthday! I’m... she pushed against the big metal door with all her might... Just... she pushed again, really putting her back into it... Not!
The door swung open and she stumbled out, her arms full and her feet suddenly slipping-sliding beneath her. She skated and spun across the floor, amazingly missing all the other McDonald’s workers, and crashed with a rather loud thud into the opposite wall. Her feet slipped out from under her and she dropped to the fetid tile floor with a sickening crunch.