When the girls I was banging were only fifteen, I began working at Wendy’s restaurant in Amherst, NY, which was, at that time, the safest godforsaken community in the greatest country in the world. Now, this was before Dave Thomas died. I considered him to be a self-made-man whom I greatly revered. What other bastard do you know that looked so damned good in a short-sleeve white shirt with an apron and a million-dollar smile? Nobody. Dave Thomas could impregnate my wife and I’d love him for it.
My job varied from toasting buns, frying burgers, and putting together sandwiches to washing dishes and taking drive-thru money, always as fast as possible. And it was all even more horrible than it sounds, for $5.50 an hour, minus taxes. The only time it was any good was when I worked with Ray, who was a good friend of mine, fellow high school wrestler and alcoholic. Ray was a far better wrestler than I was, and his signature move (the Standing Cradle) put the opponent in the rather precarious position of deciding whether to be pinned immediately, or be pinned after being dropped directly on his face. Believe it or not, the opponent usually went with the latter option.
Ray may have been a better wrestler than I, but he was a downright shitty employee for Dave Thomas. Ray would have about four burgers going on the grill, with two customers at the counter, five walking in and three cars at the drive through. Somebody would tell him to put more burgers on, quick, and he’d reply “These goddamn snake-in-the-grass-bastards can wait for their goddamn triple cheeseburgers. I don’t give a shit! Hahaha!” Ray made a mockery of Dave Thomas’s training video, which proved the real-life Wendy to be a fat little redheaded broad with enough of an inheritance to land any penniless chump she wanted.
Just like anyone who makes work enjoyable by dicking over the management, Ray was promptly fired. I believe they did it over the phone, and I’m quite sure that Ray did not give a shit. The only thing that made work tolerable after that was stealing from Dave Thomas (by a clever coupon switching scheme I devised), and sex on lunch breaks with my underage girlfriend. The paycheck certainly didn’t make it tolerable. The paycheck was shit.
One day was especially horrible, because we were understaffed as always (which is why all fast food restaurants are perpetually showing a Now Hiring sign) and upper-level management, including our franchise’s owner, was hanging around, checking up on the operation, and asking us all stupid training video-related questions. Now, when you’re grilling two dozen burgers and standing next to a fryer, you don’t want some pencil neck sonofacunt with Italian shoes asking you What Three Signs tell you that a burger has had its shit ruined too badly to be served to a valuable customer. I’m an A student, but I’m sweating and I haven’t watched the training video in months and my fat little manager bitches at anyone who wastes the meat. So I tell him I don’t know, and he puts the three hairy fingers in my face and tells me exactly What Three Signs ought to tell me when a burger’s too messed up to be served to a valuable customer. Great, I say. It’s time for my lunch. I hope somebody can take over the grill and be extra mindful not to burn these square pieces of shit.
It was hot out that day, and I was sweating all the way to my underage girlfriend’s house. But I got there and it felt good to spend a few minutes away from Dave Thomas’s minions and their verbal assaults on my intelligence. We had sex. Me and the girlfriend that is, not Dave Thomas… or his minions. It was great, it was safe, her dog watched, and late ‘90s pop music played on the local Top 40 station. I had to go back to Wendy’s. Back to the upper-level minions. Back to the heat, the square beef and the fat little manager. Everyone hated the fat little manager. He had bad breath. He smoked cigarettes, drank coffee, and didn’t brush his teeth. He drove some kind of sports car, maybe an old Corvette. Ray and I had once plotted to take a dump in a box and mail it to him, but we couldn’t get around the legal technicalities and decided against it.
So I didn’t go back. I lay in bed with the girlfriend, late ‘90s pop music playing on the radio, and enjoyed my life for a few extra minutes. I hatched a plan: I would go through the drive-thru and tell them that I wasn’t coming back to work, ever, and that they could go ahead without me. The fat manager could sweat and cry and get bitched at by the minions. I didn’t care. Fast food is for suckers. My next job was even worse. But it was nice to be young enough to screw underage girls while the dog watched.
