It's all in the details...

For a better part of two days I found myself employed at a KFC.

The first day on the job I puked for nearly an hour in a employee toilet after an attempt to clean out a chicken frier.  Day two they trained me on the register and I remember having involuntary gag reflexes while helping customers achieve heart disease. 

Day three might have ended me, but I wanted to keep going in this life, so I thought of ways I could call off work...

As luck would have it, my Mother asked me if I could pick up my brother from a friends house.

So I did what any loving brother would do, I called my employer, informed them that I needed to pick up my brother, and would be running more than late for todays shift.  They agreed to my obligation and immediately I set off to retrieve my younger brother.   

A little over two days later I called my employer to see what my schedule looked like for the following week.

Manager-

"Hello KFC."

Dukes My Boy-

"Hey! It's Dukes My Boy, I was just calling to get my schedule."

Manager-

"We fired you, you don't have a schedule."

Dukes My Boy-

"What? Why?"

Manager-

"You said you had to pick up your brother, I was okay with you being late, but you didn't show up for two days!"

What I failed to mention was the fact that my brother was in Pennsylvanian and my return to Michigan and the glorious KFC wouldn't be for a couple days.  For heavens sakes, I asked him myself if I could go and he did say yes to the arrangement.  If only he would have dug a little deeper and asked the questions that really stir up answers like, who, what, where, when, and why? 

What could be harder than working?

It was my junior year of high school, it was 1996, and I was gainfully employed at our towns local "Buffet Style" Steakhouse as a dishwasher. 

Hired along side one of my best friends, we thought this might be a lot of fun, until they NEVER scheduled us to work together, ever.  My friend ended up quitting and why I never followed his lead is beyond me (I believe it had to with all the free popcorn shrimp I would eat from the buffet, dipped in cocktail sauce, who's not gonna like that?).

I can still remember how the food smelled when you blast a plate with piping hot water...the steam lifts the aroma of cheese sauce and low grade meat quite well.  Till this day I still have a gag reflex every once in awhile when I do my own dishes at home.

But this story is not about washing dishes, its about how desperate a teenage kid can be, when all his friends are not working and he is...

It was a Saturday, I was about two hours into my shift,  finally coming to my senses about where I am working, and how much I hated washing dishes.  I had fantasies about throwing off my apron, walking out the back door, jumping in my truck, with a middle finger in the air.

But I was a pussy...

Since I didn't have the balls, I would use my mind, and think of the best possible solution to my problem.  As luck would have it, the dishwashers at this Steakhouse didn't want to use the rubber mats, since they felt they were not necessary.  Instantly my mind went into overdrive.

I check the room, no cameras, no people, just a wet floor, and an asshole wanting to get out of work.  So I did what any person would do...

They discovered me laid out on the wet floor in sheer pain as I grab for my ankle.

Manager

"Oh my God! What happen??"

Me

"I just slipped on the floor, it's my ankle, if only the mats were down like they are suppose to be this might of never happened!"

To be honest, it never even entered my mind that this was a big deal, that I could have possibly sued the restaurant for a large settlement, I never planned on this whole thing backfiring on me.  But it did...

Me

"You know what, I just want to go home, I think it would be best if I just go home, get some rest, and stay off my foot."

Manager

"If you got hurt, I need to send you over the hospital right away for xrays!  I can't just send you home!"

I thought to myself, "Okay, I'll go over there real quick, tell them I'm feeling better, and I'll be home in no time."  So I hobbled out of the steakhouse, into my truck, and headed over to the emergency room with some paper work that my manager prepared for me.  

In the matter of minutes that it took me to get to the hospital, I imagined myself getting locked up for faking a slip and fall, or maybe I would have to work at this Steakhouse all summer to pay off the hospital bill!  At that moment I realized what I had to do...I had to commit to my story 100 percent.

Painfully I made my way into the hospital, checked in, waited for a better part of an hour, and eventually led through the lobby to the xray room.  I remember when I met the doctor for the first time, his face looked puzzled, as he clutched the xray entering the room.  This is when I really started to get scared...

Doctor

"Hello "My Name", how are you?"

Me

"Oh me? Ah, not too good."

Doctor

"Well, I have been looking at your xrays for awhile now and I can't seem to find anything..."

(I'm crapping myself)

Doctor

"I even asked another doctor to take a look and we both came up with the same theory..."

(I need a diaper now)

Doctor

"We decided that you might have a "hairline" fracture, which would not show up on the xrays, and if you are not careful, it could get a lot worse."

 The Doctor then gave me an air-cast, a prescription for some pain medicine, and further instructions on how to take care of my ankle.

This whole process only took 3 hours!  I would have been almost done with work, paid for my time, filled with popcorn shrimp, and on my way to hangout with friends.  But no, I was on my way home, preparing myself to lie to my Mom, preparing my limp, my pain, my suffering...

It was a few days later and as I did the days before I would strap on the air cast, head down stairs, limp around, and go to school.  The moment I got into my truck, I would take off the air cast, shove it under my seat, and continue my day just as any other.  In fact, this day felt so normal that I forgot to put the air cast back on and completely forgot I was faking an injury.

I was half way up the stairs, sprinting after a friend, when my Mom yelled, "Your Ankle!!" 

Instantly I hit the deck landing at the top of the stairs, rolled around in pain, grabbed my ankle, and shouted, "Oh! I forgot! Thanks Mom, I need to be more careful."  My pathetic act carried on for a number of days and when the Steakhouse called to see how I was doing I said what any normal person would say...

"I'm starting to feel better, but since your restaurant has an unsafe working environment, my parents and I think it's best if I didn't work there any longer." 

    

It's been some time...

Yes, it has in fact been some time since I have written--well, anything...

But I can tell you that I have thought about it, talked about it, and now I'm writing about it...

Moral of the story...

I wish there was one.