The Battle of Burger Joint

Working in the fast food industry is possibly one of the crappiest jobs a teenager can have, but at sixteen, it was one of the few jobs available. I was a bit mature for my age, being I’d grown up in a rough section of the city. I needed spending money, though, and there was no other way to get it. Well, there was, but I didn’t intend to go down that road. That landed me flipping burgers and dropping fries at Burger Joint.

Now meet Dave. Dave is the assistant manager at BJ, as we dubbed it, and he’s an unmitigated prick. He was the guy who would have taken a beating in high school, and probably did. Now that he had a minuscule amount of power, he used it improperly. When I interviewed with the pudgy man with thinning hair and a plastic smile, he told me the place was like family. That would only hold true if Dave were the drunken step-dad who chased you around with a belt.

There I was, fully trained in one week, creating heart clogging meals with the minimal required gusto. It took about that long for the boss man to start in on the new guy. We wore these incredibly bizarre uniforms made of all polyester, topped off with big puffy hats. My uniform was somehow askew, and I was to rectify it immediately. This was during the dinner rush, and I was behind the line. Sure, Dave, I’ll get right on that. It went on like that for awhile, and it wasn’t aimed at me in particular, he had a scatter gun approach. I was different, though.

You grow up hard, there’s a limit to what you’ll accept. I’d taken a bus out to the suburbs for the job, and my “direct superior” didn’t understand how that worked. He found out the day he picked a single fry out of my basket and sniffed it. Then, to the kitchen staff’s amazement, he commanded the "dirty" grease be changed. This was about four in the afternoon. Grease is changed after hours because it takes awhile to heat. Someone tried to tell him…

I knew I’d be the scapegoat when no fries or fried food were available for dinner, so I was done. The floor drains were all closed, a co-worker made sure, and I asked him one last time. While he screamed at me I did two things. First, I threw that big puffy hat into the fryer, which melted to make the worst smell you can imagine. Then, I opened the outlet valves on the dual fryers. Without a steel pot under them, the hot grease at 375° flowed full out onto the floor.

The BJ had a giant clown that spewed helium to blow up balloons. It was protected by plexiglass at the front counter, because snot nosed teens liked messing with the stupid thing. That was where Dave was standing when I let the grease loose, trapping him in the corner. He jumped into the arms of the clown and hung on for dear life, and he screamed. I recall chuckling as I left via the back door with him cursing my name. Well, the name I gave him, anyway.

(WC - 541)