Everybody’s Working For The Weekend Part 2 - “Nothing can kill the Grimace”

 

            When we moved from Wayne to Belleville I was forced to quit my job working for Al. I didn’t particularly love that job, except for the stolen porn and Mt. Dew, but I’d gotten used to having some spending money. Then when we were forcibly relocated like a family of Jews hiding in Antwerp discovered by the Nazi’s. Suddenly I was living in a house on an industrial road as opposed to the honest to Odin post WW2 neighborhood I’d been assured we would stay in if I moved in with dad and the stepmother. So I was stuck in yet another strange town, going to yet another strange school, no money, no transportation, and my friends were all miles away.

            That summer I lived off of what money I had saved and the $50.00 that my grandparents gave me for my 16th birthday. I remember receiving a phone call from my aunt, the one that told the entire family that I was gay after I confided in her that I was bi after I tried to kill myself … but that’s another story, she proceeded to rip me a new asshole for spending the fifty dollars instead of saving it and told me that I was an ungrateful little shit and a bad grandson. Later she, much like a few other choice members of my family, claimed that she didn’t remember any of it because of the drugs.

            So fucking typical of my family.

            So when I realized my living situation was permanent I had dad drive me to the local McDonalds and I filled out an application. It was a surreal experience, the restaurant manager was in and she looked at my application and immediately gave me an interview. She zeroed in on my experience at Al’s and seemed skeptical when I told her that he would give me a glowing recommendation. After a short break during which she called Al’s I was hired on the spot.

            McDonalds was the first job where I was given responsibility and I found that I liked it and that I had a taste for it. I worked there for almost exactly two years and within the first year they had made me a crew trainer and I was given more hours than any of the other high school students. After a short stint at the drive through and at the counter where it was learned that I was not necessarily “people friendly” I was never taken from the grill area except on the weekends when I was the maintenance man. When I was in the grill I was in charge and for the last six months I worked there I was one of the youngest crew chiefs in the company.

            I loved working at McDonalds. Not the job, the job was complete shit, but the people. They were the greatest group of people I’ve ever worked with. Fuck I had fun, we played around, there were many pranks played on one another, there were more hookups amongst employees there than anywhere else I have ever worked. There was a couple that met there and every night when we closed they disappeared into the back for fifteen minutes … Thor only knows what they were doing.

            I was never a stud and most of the time I was dating one person or another, for a fat kid I never lacked for company. But there was one incident that I’ll relate. There was a manager working there that I was really friendly with, when I played Santa at Christmas she got on my lap … really I was a jack ass moron, who could have missed the signal of an attractive twenty two year old manager semi grinding on a seventeen year old Santa’s lap?

            But the idea that she liked me never occurred to me.

            She quit a couple of months later and we had her going away party after the restaurant closed.  Part of the way through the party I went to the back of the building and she followed me. We talked for a few minutes and it never occurred to me that she was moving closer and closer and we did. Then she kissed me. It wasn’t the best kiss I have ever had, the first one with my wife has that honor and I find it impossible to believe that that will ever change, but it caught me off guard. After she kissed me she grinned at me and went back to the party.

            I know you all want to know what happened next.

            Nothing, nadda, zip we didn’t get sexy we didn’t fuck she didn’t blow me … fuck I never even touched her tiny boobs. I was too much of a pussy back then to make a move or take advantage of an obvious fucking invitation. Now, if I were single sure, but back then… fuck girls scare me now can you imagine seventeen year old Josh with a saucy older woman? Nineteen year old Josh had to be so deep in the throes of love to ignore the same fear when confronted with one Karen Isbel … and folks she had to kiss me first too.

            At McDonalds I was treated like I knew what the fuck I was doing for the first time in my entire life. Dad would drive me and pick me up until I was able to buy my own car, which was about four months later. But there was one day when dad had to work an early shift and I was opening. I asked the stepmother if she would drive me and she said yes. That morning she spent the entire time telling me that if my dad wouldn’t drive her drug addicted thief of a second son who was hiding out with us to his job then she shouldn’t have to drive me. Bear in mind that I asked her and not dad and that I’d never stolen anything from her or really, even in retrospect, been much of a problem to her. She was going to use any opportunity to fuck me. I thought at the time that she was just doing it because she was a bitch but later I realized one very important thing, the stepmother just hated me.

            That was the last time I EVER asked her for anything it was also the day I realized that I hated her.

            When I tried to kill myself in the summer between Junior and Senior years McDonalds gave me no shit for taking a huge chunk of the summer off and welcomed me back when I returned. They were the only place I ever worked where I felt like people actually gave a shit. There are personal exceptions in other jobs (Kelly that’s aimed at you) but as a whole McDonalds seemed to give a fuck.

            I didn’t want to quit the job and I’d been taking the classes to be a manager after I turned eighteen. But when things came to a head at the house and I was told I wasn’t welcome anymore I had to move. My grandparents said I could come to them and so I quit my job and moved the day after my eighteenth birthday.