French Fries and Lavender, a fragrance by :Darren

Hello! This is going to be a post about my job about McDonald's. I have many stories about working here and am sure many more will come in the future, so I may post some more. An anthology, if you will.
***


Like most Americans. Wait. Like most of fortunate Americans in this recession - I have a job.


I work at your friendly neighborhood McDonald's :D


I started at the end of the summer after I graduated high school. It is my first job, though I currently have another as well. Anyways, working here has given me a perspective on life I didn't have before. I can also tell tell how much of an asshole you are by the end of your first sentence.


I can remember my first day. I was greeted by one of my numerous managers and led to the grill by a friendly bull-dyke lesbian (we were friends until she got fired). Then I was given a mop and instructed to clean the lobby. I remember being so nervous that I was perspiring a bit. It was my first job and I didn't know what to expect. 


It probably didn't help that I worked in the poor / scary side of town.


The first night was crazy, by the time I got off of work I was sure I had post traumatic stress disorder. I couldn't get the beeping out of my head and I kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking I fell asleep at work.


The following weeks continued in a similar fashion. I was labeled 'the quiet one' by many of my co-workers. In fact, that attribute was the reason I got a rather meager raise at my six month evaluation despite my stellar progress.


In reality, I was taking everything in. I came from a school on the other side of town, where the average household income was about triple than where I was working. I'm not from a well-to-do family, but we went to a nice public school (except for the stupid rules). I was suddenly surrounded by all of the people that used to scare me, and I didn't understand half of their slang. 


A few examples:
Cup caking: (verb) to be flirting / 'being sweet on someone'
Scraper: (noun) an automobile that has modifications that cost more than the value of the car itself. (ex: expensive custom paint, chrome rims, etc.)


What? Is that even English you're speaking?


Also, no one likes to read here. Few people liked to read at my school, but NO ONE reads here. I spend my break reading on my iPhone and people think I'm weird. 


We have a notice board in the break room about new policies, promotions, and general rule enforcement. The problem is that our managers cannot write to save their life. Every week there is a new post that has several spelling and grammatical errors. I'm not the best writer, nor do I have perfect spelling and grammar, but I at least know the difference between there/their/they're, accept/except, lose/loose, and how to spell simple words.


I have actually made an activity out of proofreading the notices every week and marking them up with my pen.


Anyways, I've digressed.


So I spent several weeks keeping put and watching everything that went on around me. Then I slowly started to talk to the people who seemed the nicest. I started at the grill and stayed there for six months. I don't think I was slow, but I was always scheduled to work with the experienced workers during the busy shifts, so I ended up on the easiest task. I would spend time trying to speed up on assembly so that I could finally be scheduled there more. In the end it was all for naught, because I was put into service, where I apparently flourished. In reality I had spent time learning how to take orders by watching the others do it and memorizing their mannerisms during lulls in the day.


I must say the first few months I was terrified of all the customers. I kept thinking if I didn't make them happy I was going to get shot (Really, I did) and always apologized.


I also learned that ghetto people really like to stretch their dollars far. They always ask for the dollar menu fries - which don't exist anymore where I work. Then they complain about the prices (Really? You can't afford $1?). And then they send back their food for the slightest reason and ask for their money back  and/or free food and/or their entire order replaced.


One woman asked for a sweetened tea mixed with unsweetened tea with added lemon wedges and extra ice. The total for this 32 oz. beverage? $1.09 after tax. When she received her drink, she looked aggravated. 


"Is this the largest size you have?" She asked with a sneer.


"Yes, yes it is."


"I want my money back, that isn't as large as I thought it was."


WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT FOR A DOLLAR, BITCH!? There is a sign outside clearly marked: '$1 Sweet Tea - 32 oz.' If you don't want it, then go the fuck home and make your own god damned tea.


But I couldn't say that - rather, I just apologized and had my manager ring up her refund order. 


My job sucks sometimes, but it gives me something to write about here.


***


This will be the extent of this post, but expect more on the subject.


UP NEXT: Shawn, the McDonald's manager extraordinaire. 


Update: Confused about the title? Let me explain. My job leaves a constant french fry smell on me (Hey, I could smell worse) and I have a strong fondness for lavender scents. My sister recently described the smell of my room as 'french fries and lavender,' which she thinks makes a good combination.

From Russia, with love.

The following post was written in a few hours with no illustration to accompany it. It is a true story that took place over the past few weeks. And once you read this, you will realize how ridiculously fast this all went for me. Although the situation is written in a way to be humorous and entertaining to read, it deals with the consequences of internet scams. 


Without further ado, I present the latest installment of TMZ (The Majestic Zeebracorn - weird I just realized that the acronym is the same as that stupid paparazzi show).


***


Everybody likes to make jokes about how bad their parents are with computers.


This one is about my stepdad's lack of internet safety.


So about a month ago my stepdad received an email from a stranger. I'm not exactly sure what she said, but considering the situation it was probably along the lines of 'I saw your picture and instantly felt some sort of connection with you.' 


Almost everyone knows you don't respond to strange emails when you don't even know how they got your email address - a major red flag. Not my stepdad; apparently he decides to send her a message as well.


The 'woman', who called herself Yulya, attached pictures of 'herself' to every message. She was gorgeous and looked like she was using portfolio pictures from a modeling agency. Some were of her posed against some spectacular scenery, while others had her half naked and posed in alluring positions.


The red flag of fishy-ness waved mercilessly.


I'm a bit hazy on the details of their budding romance, but a few exchanges later she was confessing her love to him and how she wanted to come and visit and get married.


It was around this time that he started flaunting her off - showing all of his friends 'his Yulya.' They tried to warn him that she may not be who she seems,  but he didn't want to hear it. He figured God was finally blessing him, which couldn't have been further from the truth.


"How can you say that about her?" He would ask. "She has said nicer things to me that anyone else ever has."


Maybe because she has never met you and she wants something.


So then she starts saying that she wants to come and visit him and a bunch of other promises. She says she needs to buy a passport and also some fee that you must pay if you want to leave Russia. I'm not going to say that this part of the story is false because I don't know anything about transcontinental travel, but I do know she asked for money.


She needed to $1,300 to cover her expenses so that she could leave Russia and she wanted my stepdad to pay them, since she had already a few thousand for her passport and tickets.


I don't know if he ever paid her the money (and I don't want to know) or if she found a few grand between her couch cushions, but soon enough she had the money to come and visit.


It was scheduled for her to arrive the day after my sister's birthday.


So our stepdad asked me and my sister to clean the house and make it look good for her arrival. He asked us to do this on the eve of my sister's birthday.


I spent the entire night before her birthday cleaning the house so that my sister wouldn't have to.


I also had to decorate the house and get her cupcakes and do everything else because he couldn't be bothered.


I spent my sister's birthday quite tired, but it was fun and I hope that she at least enjoyed herself.


It was finally the big day: the day that Yulya was supposed to fly in. She said that she would get here at four in the afternoon and to be ready to pick her up when she landed. 


Around three o' clock my stepdad found and email in his inbox from Yulya. It explained that she was not on the plane and that she had spent the whole day in customs. Her story was that she was stopped by customs before she boarded and said that she still owed the government money for a loan she took out for her flat.


So then Yulya said if my stepdad wanted to see her, she needed $2,000 to pay off her debts. She also mentioned some weird thing that if he did pay it, the government would give him $50,000 for some bullshit reason or another.


At long last my stepdad finally realized that it was a scam and quit responding to her. He's still a bit broken up about it, but hopefully he'll learn his lesson on the dangers of the internet.

Good Riddance (Living with Bethany, Part II)

In the time between this post and my last post, the monster that has come by the name of Bethany has left us. And while we are still shaky from the memories she left behind, we are more peaceful and happy knowing she's in a better place.


Rehab.


Ha! Got you! You thought she died - well she didn't. She left, and that's a party in itself.


Even though she is gone, I figured I should still finish this. So without further ado, I present 


Living with Bethany, Part II - The Final Encounter.





(Dishes)
Bethany might be retarded. My reasoning for this is because when I do the dishes, I put them all away in their respective spots. I have all of the glasses arranged by the sets they came in, and they all are put in upside down to keep dust from getting inside the glass. The bowls are stacked according to size for optimal space saving and the plastic cups are arranged according to size.


When Bethany attempts putting away the dishes, she puts them wherever they will fit. I find bowls where the glasses should go and the glasses that she put away are always out of order. She just throws every thing around, disrupting the order.


This goes back to my retardation theory. You know those tests they give children at an early age? You know, the ones with 'find the pattern' or 'what doesn't belong?' She fails at both of those test since she can neither realize the pattern there is to the way the dishes I've sorted and also because she cannot tell what does not belong (remember, she put the bowls with the cups).

(Housekeeping)
On the rare occasion that Bethany chooses to try and pick up after herself like the adult she is supposed to be, she often flakes out towards the end and I'm left to finish the job for her. Bethany once tried to clean the bathroom. She may have even done her possible best, but I really don't care about that; I just want a clean bathroom.

She sprayed the shower with a bunch of disinfectant but failed to scrub off the nasties that a shower usually contains. And after the whole ordeal was done with, she left all of the cleaning supplies in there. I wondered if she would ever pick them up (which is a stupid question when I look back on it). Those chemicals sat there for about a week because I was being stubborn about not cleaning up after her.

 I finally broke because the last hand towel (which I just put on the towel rack) fell off of the rack and into the old bucket of mop water - which meant I had to do both the laundry and clean up the bathroom. After I was done properly cleaning the bathroom, Bethany had the audacity to ask if I would finish up so she could take a shower.

Rage boiled up inside me.

The only reason I cleaned the bathroom that night was so that I could take the first shower, and I was going to fight for that dammit. So I said no and explained to her why - in the most polite way possible.

I still have a problem telling people I have problem with them, but on a positive note I got the first shower - yay!

XxX***XxX

I have a feeling that she may just be playing stupid sometimes.

Of course then I always remind myself that she is, in fact, stupid and then curse my living conditions.

She's smart enough to vacuum which you think would be good, but she doesn't grasp the finer details of vacuum ownership. Such as emptying the debris container.

She asked me why the vacuum wasn't working and the first thing I noticed was that the debris container was overflowing. So much that it was starting to clog the filter, which I also had to clean out.

She attempting finishing the work when I returned the vacuum to her. Key word attempt.

You know those hose attachments that all vacuums come with? The ones that if you leave them unattached, the floor vacuum just doesn't work? Well she left it off while she vacuumed and filled the whole room with dust. I only noticed because I could smell dirt wafting from where I was across the house. Then the sneezing (I'm allergic to dust, well dust mites, but as the name implies - those two are often found together). After the dust literally settles, I go in there to clean up the mess she's gone and made...

(Dishes, Part II)

Going back again to the dishes again (it's a sore subject with me), lets go to how she washes dishes.

Poorly.

Many times she will leave dishes in the sink for days before she finally does them, we've already covered this, but when she finally cleans them they are even more dirty than before.

I had a glass I used for water in there and when I went to get it off of the drainboard it was all greasy and I had to rewash all of the dishes.

For some reason re-washing the dishes is a lot more tedious than washing them if they were dirty. I think it's because you know you're only here because someone else is too incapable to actually wash dishes the right way so you're here to do it all over again. 

(Consideration for others)

We keep our toothbrushes in our bathroom medicine cabinet. We don't use any fancy toothbrush holders or anything, we just put them in a plastic cup. 

Bethany seemed to think that leaving her toothbrush next to the sink was a bad idea, seeing as it was getting covered in soap, so she decided to take action in her own way. I come home from work, intent on getting washed up so I can go to bed, when I open the medicine cabinet I find her toothbrush in my cup laying right on my toothbrush.

EWW!!!

This is after her recently going to the doctor for her sickness - which has been going on for the past two weeks. 

She had an upper respiratory infection, and she was putting her toothbrush with mine. 

Enough was enough. I went into the living room to confront her about it. I told her that my cup was not a place for her toothbrush and that I didn't appreciate being exposed to her ailments due to her negligent practices.

At first she looked at me confused like I was speaking something other than English, then asked me what else she was supposed to do. Apparently we should have provided her with a cup for her toothbrush- at least that is what she said. I finally snapped and told her if she was able to bring a cup into the shower like a big girl (by the way, our shower head is detachable so the point is moot), she is just as capable of bringing a cup for her toothbrush.

I figured that the conversation was done with but a few days later I was talking to the neighbor who was friends with Bethany (not really) and she told me that I blew up at Bethany for no reason.

Apparently Bethany told her that I gave her the okay for her to use my cup (Really? What the fuck?) and that I just blew up at her when I found out about it. Bethany was probably so drunk she thought she had a conversation with me about this, but who really knows what goes on in her head.

Bethany, Part I

I realize that some of you may be wonder; "Hey that guy spelled zebracorn wrong, auto-correct clearly shows it as zebra corn. We shouldn't listen to him - he's an idiot. You should realize that a zebracorn is not in fact a real animal and I can pretty much spell it any way I want. I could even spell it with a five if I want.


Ze5bracorn - the 5 is silent.

That's right I made a Bandslam reference. I thought it was a good movie; and no I did not see it in theaters just to see the exclusive New Moon trailer - I saw it on the movie channels a year later instead of sleeping for my class.

I've digressed enough already, so here's the story - which was originally posted onto my Facebook.


***

It's currently 10:39PM and all I want to do is punch Bethany in the face. Normally I'm kind of against violence towards women, well people in general, but  I should make an exception. So those who know why Bethany is living with me already know how I feel about the situation (I hate it), but now I'm REALLY starting to hate her. I'm not even sure how I'm going to get all of this across in a written format, but I'll do my best. A paragraph-per-beef should do the trick.

::Update:: - Paragraphs are not enough for this woman. She needs a fucking outline! There's no other way to sort out her chaotic lifestyle.

A: I would like to start on her kitchen antics.

1. When she gets one of  her (numerous) beers out of the fridge, she doesn't just open the can and drink it. No that would be too easy. She instead gets a cup / glass / bowl (once) and pours it in there WITH A SHIT-TON OF ICE!!! Not only do I find this grossly wasteful and totally unnecessary (who drinks beer with ice?), but this is not enough for her. She leaves a good deal of beer left in the can and throws it into our recycling. She will then continue to get another cup and more shit-tons of ice per beer. She goes through a 36pack of beer every two days. Aside from her beer, all other beverages she enjoys get put into the fridge while ours do not. Other things that may actually spoil, like sauces and food, are left on the counter among her other messes.
2. I mentioned the partially drained beer cans in the previous section. You may think that it would have been enough to mention the beer cans in passing, but no, it's part of a much larger problem she has. The way we have set up our garbage situation is that we have three trash cans. One is for actual garbage; one for cans, bottles and glass to be taken to the recycling plant for money; then the last can for other recyclables such as paper and aluminum foil that is taken away by our garbage people. Well I have explained the sorting situation to her and still fails to consistently follow it. I will take the lid off of the garbage can and find numerous recyclables that are taking up lots of space. Or I will find a bunch of plate-scrappings lovingly garnished upon the cans and bottles bin. It's a bit of horrible surprise every time I throw something away. Not only this but all of the bottles / cans of beer she throws in there contain not-so-trace amounts of beer still in them. Every time I take the cans to the side of the house, I am usually spattered in a lot of old and stale beer. I hate beer. A lot. And the stench that it leaves then gets left onto myself and I am filled with anger.
3. She seems to like to cook. That would normally be good, but she likes to cook a huge-ass amount of food and tell no one about it. Hours later she will knock on my door for some arbitrary reason or another and then she'll mention in passing: 'I made some food if you're hungry.' Well I'll go into the kitchen and see what new mess she's gone and made and I'll find food that was long ago hot but sat there for hours. I know that if I do not put the food away it will continue to sit there, possibly until the next day, until she either has eaten it all (even while cold) or finally put it away. Also she cooks with no one but herself in mind. My sister is a vegetarian and I won't eat spicy food. Well after we tell her that (she said she was cooking and asked what we could have) she makes stir fry and rice. The stir fry contains vegetables that were cooked with meat and is therefore inedible for my sister, and it is also spicy. Well that leaves the rice right? YOU THOUGHT WRONG!!! She decides to make sticky rice. It does not occur to her that rice is naturally sticky and will clump by itself; nope she adds sugar to make it stick. I don't like sweetened rice, it already has a kind of light sweetness to it. True story: I came out of my room around noon to see what they were calling me for. Well they brought McDonald's for everyone. They get points for that I guess. But since Bethany's stomach is small due to a gastric bypass she got a long time ago, she cannot finish her big mac meal. Does she put the rest in the fridge until she can finish it? NOPE!!! She instead leaves it out and continues to eat it throughout the day. Until the next day. She finished it around noon the next day, making it the first 24 hour meal I've ever seen.
4. I'm almost done - with the kitchen part. So she likes to cook, but she doesn't like to clean. Makes things problematic don't you think? On one occasion both Bethany and my stepdad left dishes in the sink for almost a week. I survived off of food from work and a snack/ bottled water stash I have in my room for a week and therefore made no dishes. By the end of the week I finally broke down and did the dishes, wanting to avoid the prospect of roaches. I get halfway through them when Bethany notices and says 'I was going to do them later.' To which I reply: 'It's been five days, later has long passed.'

Wow, so that was a lot. And there is still more to come, just not tonight. I'll post more when I have time.