The Fast Food Saga: Part Seven- The End of the Fast Food Saga

So much has happened since I last posted about my job. I delayed this post for so long because, well, there wasn't anything interesting to write about. This will be the last post in the Fast Food Saga *wipes away tear* because I would rather do a few mildly interesting posts than a lot of completely boring ones.

The Mascot

I guess my managers were pleased with my performance as an ice cream cone, because they have scheduled me to be The Mascot about twice a week. It's still lots of fun, though the suit seems to get a bit heavier every time.

Kids like the Mascot. But kids are also evil, so some of them like to attack me. One night it got particularly crazy. The little ankle-biters delightful young guests were pounding on my suit's giant ice cream head, swarming around my legs, and stepping on my feet. It wasn't until one kid suggested loudly that they "Tip him over and see if he can stand up again!" that my manager escorted me into the back room and told the kids, "He's not coming back until you start acting nice."

I cowered in the back room, waiting for the horde to disperse. Eventually the kids left, but the whole experience left me a bit shaken.

The Kitchen

I'm still working in the kitchen a few times a week, making fried food for the masses. I'm still locked in mortal combat with the salt shaker, Lucifer. I told myself I wouldn't be bothered by his absurdly high temperature anymore. Mind over matter. Lucifer didn't like that, so he retaliated by letting his lid fall off over an entire batch of fries, burying them in a mountain of salt. I tried to explain to my manager that it wasn't my fault, but he wasn't convinced.

This salt shaker needs to be destroyed.

The End

That's all I've got to say, really. It's been fun posting about work, and I hope you guys have enjoyed The Fast Food Saga.


Quote of the Day:

"RAAAAWWR! I'm eating your cousin!"
-Spoken by a four year old kid who was standing in front of The Mascot eating an ice cream cone.






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The Fast Food Saga: Part Six- I AM THE MASCOT.

Yes, you read the title correctly. My life's goal has been completed. I am the mascot at The Franchise.

On Being the Mascot

It's just as much fun as I thought it would be. The suit is about seven feet tall, and the only visibility is through the giant, creepily smiling mouth and the giant, never-blinking eyes. Seriously. This thing's creepy.

The limited visibility in the suit makes things such as walking a lot more interesting. The operator of the suit has to constantly bob his head around and crane his neck to get any kind of idea of what's going on around him. When the operator takes the suit off and attempts to walk, he must remember to cease bobbing his head, as he is now a normal person, and people who walk like seagulls are generally known as idiots. I may or may not have learned this the hard way.

Once I have the suit on, I become another person entirely. I hand a lot of balloons to little kids, give a lot of high fives, and engage in an inordinate amount of dancing. This is another thing I have to adjust to when I take off the suit. You see, when there's a seven foot tall ice cream cone doing the Macarena in front of a group of kids, they squeal and giggle, and the parents find it amusing.

When it's a seventeen year old kid with glasses enthusiastically doing the Macarena for the kiddies... Not so much.

I had to consciously restrain myself from dancing in front of several children after I clocked out tonight.

My co-workers warned me that it wasn't always fun. They were right, to some extent. It gets very hot in the suit. The air you're breathing is the same air you've been breathing for the past two hours, mixed with sweat and the smell of fast food. Not extremely pleasant.

Also, the suit is pretty heavy, so your shoulders get tired quickly. And the arm holes are out the front of the suit, rather than the side, so you have to walk around kinda like a zombie. A zombie seagull.

(As I composed this post, I thought I'd check and see if there are any image results for "zombie seagull" from the Googles. There are.)

This was the closest thing I could find. It's a zombie-skeleton-surfing-bird... thing. You're welcome.

Overall, though, it's a fun job. The hordes of kids swarming around you provide something of an ego-booster, albeit a strange one.

See you guys next time.

Quote of the Day:

"Mommy, I don't wanna hug the giant ice cream cone!"

-A traumatized four-year-old

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Five- Back on Track

Last week was a bad week at work. I wasn't doing well for a number of reasons, and then a guy got fired. With this in mind, I didn't feel like posting last week, because there was nothing funny or entertaining to say.

This week has been much, much better.

My boss was much happier today, which made work much easier. Somehow I also had much more energy to power through the day, so that was nice.

The Mascot

The fast food restaurant where I work has a mascot. This mascot roams around the dining room on select days, entertaining the kids. If I told you exactly what kind of mascot it was, I'd pretty much divulge what company I work for, which is something I can't do. Suffice to say that the mascot is a giant walking food item. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

I want to be the lucky guy in the suit. I love working with kids, and being the mascot looks like a lot of fun. So I've set that as my goal. My life ambition right now is to get inside that suit and walk around the dining room scaring entertaining kids.

Other co-workers who have done it before tell me that it isn't fun. "It's really hot in there," they say. "You'll start hating it after a while," they tell me.

Perhaps, deep inside, they've lost their childlike spirit, growing cynical and jaded as time robs them of life's simple pleasures.

Or maybe they're right and it is no fun.

Either way, I'm not going to let them crush my dreams. I will be the mascot one day. Just you wait...

Cooked Hand

My hand was cooked today. I was reaching into a fryer and grabbing some onion rings and a glob of oil splashed onto the inside of my hand. Ouch.

I probably shouldn't tell you what deep fried hand smells like.

I'm telling you anyway.

It smells like chicken. Fried chicken.

The only thing missing was batter and a bit of salt and pepper. It would have been enough to make any common cannibal's mouth water as they fondly remembered cannibal picnics on warm summer evenings with their cannibal friends, sitting on cannibal blankets and feasting on chocolate covered aunts, while the cannibal children laugh and frolic on the playground in their game of swallow the leader...

Wow. That got a bit out of hand.

Anyway.


Quote of the Day:

"Seth, you're getting pretty good at fryers. I guess that makes you Lord of the Fries."

-Person for whom I am too lazy to think of a fake name

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Four- Epic Pep Talk

I just finished another shift at The Franchise. It's the second one since my last post, and I apologize for not getting a post up after that shift. But between school (gotta graduate somehow, right?) and work and school and more school.... OK, actually I don't apologize because I had a perfectly reasonable excuse for not posting. So there.

Best Pep Talk EVER

I arrived, clocked in, washed up, donned my fashionable kitchen attire, and walked into the kitchen ready to rock and roll. My manager (it was Marvin this time) said, "OK, so today, we're gonna have you doing fryers by yourself. That means you'll be responsible for all of the fryers and this guy over here is going to help you only when you're falling way behind."

Fantastic.

It was a Thursday night and Thursdays are usually pretty slow. This was not a slow Thursday. This was a mind-blisteringly busy Thursday. I guess everyone in town decided they needed food that had been immersed in oil. Immediately.

I launched into the endless stream of orders and was making food when Marvin said, "Listen up!"

I listened up, but I was not prepared for what he was about to do. He was about to deliver the greatest pep talk in the history of them all. Here it is:

"OK, so, uhhh... Drive thru orders were a little slow, so... speed those up a little. And... we need to, umm... make some good quality food. Tonight. So... let's do that now."

Dead silence filled the room and drowned out the chaotic din of the fryers, the grill, the vents, and everything else.

Somewhere, in the distance, I could hear a fly walking up the wall. It stopped and rubbed its hands together in that fly-esque way.

Outside, an errant tumbleweed drifted and rolled across the parking lot.

Then, one person clapped. Very slowly, we all joined in. It was exactly like this video:

And then we continued our work, comforted by the knowledge that we had such a fearless and inspiring leader to guide us through the narrow paths and hazards of the fast food industry.

Fun Facts:

• Onion rings are absurdly difficult to put into bags. They are shaped weirdly and they are unreasonably hot, so the process of putting a serving of onion rings into a bag is not an entertaining one, to say the least.
• Seriously guys, stop ordering onion rings. Or I'll make you come back here and bag them yourself.
• I'm not quite ready for the big leagues when it comes to running fryers. We've got five of them, and the multitasking required for the job is intense. 
• Note to self: Play more Cake Mania before next shift.
• Lucifer is still as lucifer-y as ever. I had to refill him. This involves holding him, tight, pulling his lid off, and pouring in new salt. This causes fourth-degree tissue burns at minimum. 

Until next time, THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!

Quote of the Day:

"...we need to, umm... make some good quality food. Tonight. So... let's do that now."

-My Manager

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Three- Pressure's On!

Tonight my manager told me we'd focus more on Time of Service (The Franchise's code for "Your job is not hard enough, let's make you work FASTER!!")

I did not do well in this area tonight. I guess the added pressure made me nervous enough to mess up more. So my night was filled with fry fumbling, cheese curd craziness, chicken tender turmoil, and onion ring... Something. I've lost interest in the alliteration now, you can figure something out for yourself.

Nicest Guy in the Fast Food Industry

The aforementioned individual is not me. I'm a pretty nice guy at work, but there is one whom I have met, who outshines the nicest of the nice. It's almost scary.

Aaron (I'm going to call him Aaron) was assigned to train me tonight, and he was really good at it. He even made the really scary task of cleaning the fryers seem like a barefoot midnight stroll through a mossy woodland trail. Yep. That's totally what it felt like.

This guy deserves a raise.

Fryers Actually Work by Magic

I asked "Caleb", another of my co-workers, exactly how the fry oil filter system worked. He started to go into a long, technical explanation, but then stopped himself and told me it's essentially magic. He doesn't know how it really works. Our managers don't know how it really works. No one knows how it works.

Hence, it's clearly magical.

That's all for now. See you next week, and remember, anyone who says "nothing is impossible" has obviously never tried to staple jello to a tree. I'm not sure what bearing this fact has on this blog post, but there you go. It's true.

Quote of the Day:

"There's just a bunch of wizards in there, contemplating magical algorithms and stuff. That's how it works."
-Caleb


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