I’ve never worked at a fast food restaurant, but I can only imagine the hijinks that must go on in one of those places. I missed out on an important part of being a teenager, all because I found that stack of fat bills inside the trunk of an old oak tree and instantly became independently wealthy.

We almost bought a Burger King franchise a few years ago just so we could all hang out together all day, flippin’ burgs and shootin’ shits and worryin’ nudding. Then we realized we’d all want the same days off, and after crunching the numbers, those regular shut downs would be the end of our venture.

When you buy a blizzard at Dairy Queen, the clerk has to flip the cup upside down for a second to prove to you how dense the dessert is. But you know that becomes muscle memory and every now and then someone orders a coke¹. They’re barely paying attention, rolling through the second nature motions, when, right before they hand the drink to the customer, they flip the cup o’ liquid upside down, ruining their new sneaks and embarrassing themselves in front of the hot new assistant manager.

Dairy Queen needs to accept what it is and get rid of the hot eats. Fill that menu with cool treats and I’ll be there cooling my guts with them on the daily.

Every McDonald’s is a well-oiled machine, but that’s because everyone has their one robot job that they’ve perfected. I bet the cashiers and the burger flippers are always at odds with each other, and that hot new assistant manager can barely assistant manage their conflicts.

Remember that pink sludge? And that hot coffee incident, which if you looked into it was actually legitimate? And how they stole the beloved H.R. Pufnstuf? And how the Monopoly game was rigged for years? Ray, you crock of shit – Ronald, you dirty McDonglenozzle.

When I was younger, I seriously considered working at Mary Brown’s, not only because it’s the best of the best, but because I once had a dream where I was swimming in a vat of their gravy, and this would be the most accessible way to make that dream come true. As long as I figured out the knobs so I didn’t scald my scalp off.

I heard tales of spit getting spit inside cop burgers at pretty much every store. That’s no fast food funny though – more of a fast food felony, of which I have absolutely no time, even as a non-cop. If I ever caught one of these do-no-goodniks, it would delight me to no end to say to them, “See you in court, Frederick Felony.” even if their name wasn’t and had never been Frederick.

Does Subway still call their people sandwich artists? I always thought that was condescending, but maybe it’s not. Maybe the implicit egotism is enough to get them to turn the apparent sandwich artistry into real art artistry. They’ll finally finish that project they’ve had ruminating around their sandwich skulls ever since they ran out of oak trunk money and were forced to get this crummy, cruddy job where the only good part besides the maybe becoming a real artist someday is that they get to eat as many free macadamia nut cookies as they want – ooh baby, gimme gimme.


¹ [Can coke be lower case yet? It’s a synonym for cola at this point, right?]

November 24 – Stephen Merchant gets fast food funny farms
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