Before landing a grocery store job, I spent six years cashiering in fast food. From front counter to the first window, I survived nine of these grease ridden nuthouses. At times, I wondered what I had done to deserve taking all kinds of psychotic abuse from every ignorant punk in town while averaging $115 a week. Come to think of it, I was forced to apply for the damned jobs. Perhaps I should have drowned myself in a fryer vat six pathetic years ago. If I ever again find myself standing beside one while wearing a ball cap and a name tag, I just might opt for the convenience of that glorious escape.

In those chaotic shrines to all that is undignified, I saw every strange and abhorrent thing except armed robbery. I'll describe to you a typical easy day at my first job. Front counter at a suburban McDonald's, which was the third busiest store in the Dallas metroplex at the time.
An army of customers form an unruly throng comprised of undesirables such as white trash, upper middle class snobs and whale assed cholesterol junkies. America's least wanted waddle in by the dozens so they can inhale overpriced samples of God's curses to the human palate.

They step up to the counter for a look at the menu. These losers stare for far too long, as if half illiterate. While reading, they wear a slack-jawed, often puzzled expression as they tilt back their heads, thereby giving me a gruesome view of their pasty double chins.

The language they use while ordering is asinine and presumptuous. "I need ...," you don't need jack, walrus. "I want ...," who gives a happy damn what you want? "Give me ...," this shit ain't free. "I'd like ...," fuck you. I'd like a fifth of bourbon and a lead pipe, 'cause I'm tired of this crap. And, my favorite, "I'll have ...," you ain't havin' a goddamn thing, ass clown. I devised the perfect response to this prediction; "We're out of that, sir." Of course we weren't out, but I might shoot back this answer two or three times in a single order, as punishment for the annoyance I had suffered. Eat this, little bitch.

The raw bedlam of front counter amazed me at first. I have never seen anything quite like a rush at that store. Stress and desperation were the order of every day while the customers treated us like trash. Customers are often slimeballs who take out their daily frustrations on cashiers. These pathetic souls apparently have sorry lives that they have created for themselves and have nobody they can safely release their anger onto. That is where we come into the equation. Truthfully, there are good reasons why a great many of us hate customers. We might hate you as well.

On front counter, unfortunately, I had to have each and every worthless one of them in my face and my line of view for the duration of their visit to the intergalactic capital of suckdom. While ordering, he's in my face and I already want him to screw off and die. I strive not to notice his sorry ass belly up to the trough of culinary horrors. To my disgust, he is accompanied by his insufferable air horn wife and screaming, drooling, snotnosed, ketchup throwing punk brat blights of humanity's future that mommy and daddy dearest call "children." Table manners are discarded, if they had ever been practiced at all. Napkins are a foreign concept while not all food picked up is successfully ingested. They proceed to the restrooms after chugging quarts of white trash champagne, a.k.a. Dr. Pepper. Their lack of decorum at the table is surpassed only by that of their bathroom habits.

Following this tooth grinding display that plays out like an episode of National Geographic, I am graced with the high honor of cleaning their landfill of a mess. Having been promoted to janitor at this point, restrooms and overflowed trash cans are part of my duties. Call me an extremist, but I find it unseemly for people to teach their kids that it is accptable to make vile messes in public. My mother made me clean my messes from restaurant tables and floors. Maybe that was because she, unlike countless many, viewed service workers as actual human beings rather than mindless, soulless gutter slaves. At this point, management want me to grin and wish these lowlifes a good day as they left what remained of the store. They're getting the Hell out, so their day must be better than mine.

This described the mundane parts of an easy day at this job: all that fun and I still got paid a whopping $5.75. The moderate and worst days were full of; degradation, filth, hatred, rage, psychotic customers, high customers, 911 calls, asshole customers and often the venomous desperation of all us cashiers. So, how was your day at work?