A Fast Food Horror Story

I worked for a well-known fast food chain in the United States for a few years, and the store I worked at was wonderful. It was a straining store, and as such, it got a lot of attention from corporate. When I got promoted to assistant manager, I found out that all of the stores did not receive the same amount of love.

I got called in a few weeks after my promotion--it's no secret that, upon taking any sort of managerial position you cease to be human, and instead become a food production automaton. Pay raises, but the per-hour level drops substantially, and anything resembling the word "no" that comes from your mouth results in quick termination. I knew the risks when I took the promotion.

I didn't know that corporate could literally send you to hell.

See, they didn't call me in to work at the training store. They called me in to work on the other side of town. It was short-staffed; that's what they told me. In retrospect, I see that this turn of phrase matched up with the situation about as well as calling the Civil War "a disagreement."

When I walked in the front doors, an employee shouted, "No, fuck you!" at the top of his lungs (with customers in the lobby) and then stormed out.

I asked what was going on. One of the teenage employees told me that the guy had just been accused of stealing money from the front register, at which point the manager of the store PUNCHED her, threw his apron in the fry grease, and then also left.

The store was down to one employee, who asked me if she could go home. What was I going to tell her? She'd just been punched! I advised her to go home, press charges. I then proceeded to close the lock down the lobby. I had no employee list, so I couldn't call anyone but the general manager, and he wasn't picking up his phone. My only option was to either close the store or try to run the drive-through by myself. I wanted to keep my job (because I hadn't really thought about it yet) so I opted to try to run the ship solo.

That's about when I saw the cockroaches. They weren't afraid of me, or of light, or of motion. They had developed sentience, and were concerned that they were eating too much. They were establishing governments.

I closed the store.

And got fired.

I will never work in fast food again.