Killing Time

I tap my screen twice. Selecting the order and opening it. Donk. Cold air. The sliding window’s door hits the ends with a noise seared like a brand into my mind. “Hi!” My voice is the best simulacrum of enthusiasm that I can muster. It’s hollow, I know my smile doesn’t meet my eyes, and as time has gone on I’ve started to pitch my voice up too high to be welcoming, it’s edging on accusatory now. Unfair to the entirely placid woman sitting in her car across from me. To her, this is her first time having this interaction in at least a day, probably far more. For me, a quick glance at my screen reveals it to be my 122nd.

I recite her order back to her, and she confirms. Neither of us is listening to the other. And I’ve done this enough to know that even if most of the details are wrong, chances are high they’d still respond in the affirmative. Her total is read with the same numbed mindlessness, words that mean nothing to me slipping out of my lips like grains of sand from a child’s plastic toy shovel.

The transaction is complete, the receipt receding into our trash can. The window gives another donk as I shut the door. Glass and plastic now separating us. “What are we waiting on for window?” The tone in my voice has changed entirely, the vapid and shallow feeling of being so different from my coworkers than from the customers leaves me feeling slimy. Like algae on a beach.

I dislike lies in any form. At first, it was just because I learned I was far too bad at recalling details to keep all the fake stories consistent. Much easier to just say the truth, and deal with the consequences thereof. But as time progressed, it formed into a distaste for the practice entirely.

“Sandwich. Bags ready.”

The information is entirely meaningless in its relation to me. The knowledge in no way changed how long I’d be waiting for said food. I don’t even really know why I asked. “Heard.” I crane my head to try and glance at the digital clock held under the large screen displaying our times. It’s much easier to see them. The big green outlined numbers. Production time: 2:20. Total time: 3:30. I wasn’t trying to see how long each order was taking and looked a little lower, but the actual time was small and tucked into the corner of the screen.

I could tell from the steadily darkening sky it was late. “What time is it?”

Our QC, who just finished setting up the bag for the next order, glances up as well. “About 8:30. When did you get here again?”

She looks at me with a raised eyebrow, aware that I was here before her, and that she was here fairly early herself.

“5am.”

“Goodness. Are you alright?”

I despise lying. But everyone is a hypocrite at the end of the day. And we have 4 more cars in line, and I don’t really know the girl beyond her thick eyeshadow. “I’m fine. Leaving soon. Probably.”

“They schedule you this long or did you-”

“Sandwich.”

She turns and takes the packaged thing quickly, shoving it into the bag. “Window.”

I take it from her and open the window. Doink. Cold air. The empty smile and half-enthusiastic half accusatory tone return like a riptide to water. “Here you are! Have a nice night!”

The woman smiles and drives away. I’ll either never see her again, or see her almost every day with more regularity than my family.

“Did you pick up a shift?”

I pull my head out of the window, the cold air’s gentle hand leaving my cheek as I withdraw. “Yeah. Nemoni had a thing.” I didn’t really ask for details. And she was happy not to give them. “I had like a 2-hour break between my shift ending and her beginning, so I’m alright.”

“Take a nap?”

“Made myself a coffee.”

She has concern in her eyes. They’re dark, and brownish but mixed when you look into them. It’s hypocritical of her. She does worse, longer, often. Shows up earlier and stays later. She’s a good person, as far as our random collection of hours spent together can tell me.

“I’m fine.” Saying it again doesn't make it true. But it does help. “Almost done. Time will move fast.”

A new car pulls up, and another doink rings out as a fake smile falls on my face.

People always say time is linear and steady, but I think anyone who’s worked a shift in fast food could tell you it’s far from it. Time is a broken mirror, with its shards placed in a line. All of differing shapes, and differing lengths, and the more you tried to run your finger along the edges, the more cuts you’d get.

It’s better to just ignore it. Better not to look at the clock. It’ll all move faster if you ignore it. The shards get smaller, and the cuts more shallow.

I could feel my consciousness starting to recede into the back of my head as the same couple of lines managed to drip out of my unthinking body. It was impressive and fascinating, how well-built our surroundings were to turn us into unthinking automatons, just things that worked and moved, did their jobs, and nothing else. Mine was to talk, to be cheerful, to receive payment, and to hand out food.

It was a skill that an intelligent enough monkey could probably learn. A baboon with the right training setup could probably do my job. The card goes into the reader, monkey gets a peanut. Card is handed back, monkey gets a peanut. Doink. Peanut.

Despite how it sounds, that’s a good thing for me. It means no conscious thought is needed to do what I do. And thus, losing my mind to my work became far easier. The reflection in the broken shards of time becomes blurred and impossible to make out. Which means that I don’t have to worry about it. I don’t have to concern myself with every minute as it passes. I just have to keep that fake smile on and keep accepting money.

I do hate lying. And it isn’t lost on me that the entirety of my job is just to lie. To pretend that this fast food place they’ve driven through is somewhere they’re welcome. To pretend I care about their experience. I know I barely register as human in their eyes. Not so much a person as a machine they’re interacting with. But, that’s almost intentional. I don’t think I could handle small talk right now. And I don’t want the judgment or concern of strangers. Much easier just to be the artificial being that’s reflected in their eyes. The fake smiling thing that serves a single purpose then disappears into nothingness.

When the last car in line leaves, and my coworker on order taker doesn't lift his finger to his headset to take a new one, I blow out a long exhale. “What time is it?”

My QC makes a similar exhale, before checking for me once more. “9:14. When do you leave?”

“10.”

She let out a small exhale. “Here, I’ll get our trash, we have some on the cart. Go grab that one and help me take it out.”

I nod, making my way to our back of house. A large cart holds all of our trash bags, so we could take them out in one go. I grab it, having to shuffle some things around so it won’t all topple over as soon as I move it.

It’s easy enough to move, and our QC has the drive-through trash bags in her hands. There's a door in our back of house. One that's supposed to always be closed, but only is when upper management is around. She pushed it open with her back, kicking down a little stopper so we wouldn’t have to walk all the way to our front to get back in.

The night air is blissfully cold, if almost too cold. The sudden wind and chill on my exposed sleeves bite on my arm. But the change from the perfectly regulated air in the drive-through is nice.

Another deep exhale leaves me as we make our way to the dumpster. She speaks without looking at me, her back to my cart. “Hey. If you weren’t working here, where do you think you’d be?”

It’s just small talk, but it makes me smile slightly. “Lidia told me earlier, that if we were all rich we could be sipping margaritas on a beach, but we’re poor, so we’re here.”

“That sounds like Lidia. Is that where you’d be then?”

Something about the night air and the coldness is disarming, it makes me want to talk. Far more than I normally would. “I think…that if my job was to sit on a beach and sip margaritas. I’d just complain about the heat, the sand, and the taste.”

“That’s…pretty sad dude.”

“Yeah. So, if I wasn’t here, I'd probably be off killing time doing something else.”

“Poor time. Always getting killed.”

I let out a small puff of air in place of a laugh. Her sense of humor was always so strange. “I think time gets its payback.”

“Guess that's true.”

I held my tongue, not wanting to dump my real emotions on someone who didn’t need to deal with my shit on top of theirs. But in truth, I hated time. I hated its refusal to slow down, speed up, or skip forward.

“Aren’t you going to college soon?”

We got to the dumpster, and she held the top open while I started throwing all the different tied-up trash bags into it. “Yeah. Fucked up some paperwork and missed a semester.”

“Oof. Rough. Just been working in the meantime?”

“Yup.”

It’s given me more than anything, a deep feeling of unease. Of stasis. Every day is the same, just slightly to the left. Every action is towards no goal. I have no end objective that I can fulfill, besides just meaninglessly waiting until I can get back into college. No movement. No momentum. Just waking up, taking orders, taking payments, and receiving a paycheck.

It keeps the lights on. And I’m frugal enough not to have to worry too much about money, save any catastrophe. But that’s almost worse. I let out another deep sigh. “Ever watch Fight Club?”

She shakes her head. “Not a big movie gal.”

“There's a quote I can’t stop thinking about. I can’t remember it word for word, but it’s something like: “We work jobs we hate to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.” I don’t really do much impressing but…”

“Just feeling a bit purposeless?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. I get that. But you’ll be working on a degree soon right?”

“Yeah. Law, maybe. I just…can’t help but worry that any job I get will be the same. That I’m just running down the clock.”

She huffed the final bag of trash in herself, dusting off her hands and we started to walk back. “Sounds rough. It’s probably because you’re single.”

I huff out a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever said I was?”

“Are you not!? Oh my god, please say you are, I’ll feel so bad if I just assumed that.”

“I mean, I am single, but you still did just assume that.”

She let out a relieved sigh. “You should try dating or something. It might be good for you. Find someone you want to kill time with.”

“Poor time. Getting double-teamed now.”

She laughed. “Yeah. Poor time.”

We walked back into the artificially controlled air of the building. Its bright lights that hadn’t changed in intensity as time passed left me feeling like it was somehow day once again. It reflexively rubbed my eyes as I looked up at them.

She gave me a pat on my shoulder as she walked past, and I felt my eyes linger on her disappearing back. “Only a half hour left!”

With a big exhale, I turned and moved the cart back where it belonged. More time still left to kill. Like always. But she was probably right. It probably was better to kill that time with someone. I still just couldn’t help but wonder, if that dead time would mean anything more besides someone, as it would alone.

I had no choice but to move through life, forwards, and at the same slow, steady pace. And hope that somewhere along the way, I’d find something worth doing.

This couldn’t be it, right? This couldn’t be my life. Working to keep the lights on, doing that until I die. At some point, somewhere along the way, I had to find some kind of purpose. A dream, a passion, a goal. Something.

I took my company-branded hat off for a moment, to run a hand through my hair, as I looked up at the clock above me, and my own distorted reflection in it. I just stared at it for a long moment, before I heard my headset go off. A new car, a new order coming in, and a new task for me to focus on.

With another sigh, I headed back to my window, ready for another donk. Another payment. And another stranger to meet for the hundredth time.