text: The first thing you do is butter the bun. Then you drop it down the toaster. The toaster takes approximately eighteen seconds to toast. You then put the top and bottom together, place them on a red tray and then cover the twelve buns that fit on the tray, 4x3, with another tray and place them to the side. Once you are ready to make the sandwich you place two pickles on the bottom, no more than a quarter inch over lapping. Then you place the chicken filet with the smooth, round side facing up and then place the crown of the bun on top. Finally open up the sandwich bag allowing enough room for the sandwich to easily slide in, then fold the bag over twice and place it in the warming drawer for five minutes. Any sandwich that sits there for longer than five minutes gets trashed. If you would like a deluxe sandwich then place either a slice of American, provolone, or pepper jack cheese on top of the filet, then put two, whole, tomato slices on top of the cheese and two pieces of lettuce, shiny side up, that frame the bun on top of the tomatoes. Then repeat until your soul has been crushed, pissed on, and every dream and fire that has ever existed in you has been stomped out by the ceaseless, monotonous work you subject yourself to in order to not even get by. They, being the people who don’t work with you, will remind you that you chose to be there, just be thankful to have a job, or that it is just temporary. You know that isn’t true though. You can’t find a better job because you are working 50 hours a week and you are too tired to do anything else. You can barely even find the energy or will power to get out of bed in the morning. Every once in a while you feel like you have enough energy and fortitude to say enough is enough and move on but then you realize your life revolves around this job. All of your friends are there. They are the people that deal with all of the shitty customers who think they are the Queen of god damn England, the ones who think they own you because you stand behind a register. Your coworkers are the ones that after all the shit you put up with tell to forget the customer, he is an asshole, you didn’t do anything wrong, people like that just happen. You have a bond with your coworkers, like brother in arms who are united by their common misery. So the cycle repeats, week after week after week after week after week after week as if your days are manufactured on an assembly line. Then you find yourself waking up in the tiny room you call an apartment. You shower and head to work and start your day off like you have the past, seemingly, five thousand days. You clock in, take your slip that shows the time you clocked in and put it your wallet. Then you say high to everyone. Then you either go to the kitchen or the front counter depending on what you are assigned that day. Then you spend the next ten hours slaving away like the robot you are. You listen to the exact same orders, make the exact same food and you have the exact same routine to live by. Then you watch your boss drive up in his new, gas guzzling behemoth of a truck and say “Hi!” to everyone as if he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. It is as if he has no idea what the people he employs put up with on a daily basis. It is as if he hopes his friendly disposition will be contagious but what does he do besides sit in that office of his in the back while you are the one who gets burned at the fryers and the one who has to choose if it is worth turning the heat on at night. You are the one that has to decide whether or not to fix your car or just walk the five miles or so. The one who should just deal with the tooth ache or dish out the three thousand dollars for a root canal because god forbid giving his employees health insurance would just decimate his profits. No one likes the boss. Between the shitty boss, shitty job, and shitty house and lifestyle what can you find to be joyous about? You are simply a tiny little speck. In fact you aren’t even speck in the scheme of things. You are less than a pixel, you are less than even the red, blue, and green lights that make up a pixel. You are nonexistent and utterly replaceable and no one will notice if you go. Just like no one has noticed the billions of stars that have existed and perished and no one ever will. Just like no one ever notices the trillions of bacteria that are beneath our feet. That is what you amount to. At some point we have all been there. The thing is though that not all of us end there. That is the saving grace. There is a glimmer of a hope that one day you can escape the cycle of the daily grind. Get a degree if you are young enough, have a support system while you find a better job, or maybe you are stronger than most and do it all alone. Not everyone is lucky though. Sometimes the grind wears you down and grinds you to you are so thin that you become a part of the walls there. You are an everlasting stone that will be a part of where you are stuck, just like the walls. Bills add up and sooner than you know it you are living out on the streets and left with nothing but free time. Maybe you cope with a steady dose of drugs. Maybe you cope with a healthier method. Either way it leads to the same thing. If you aren’t apart of the club, the haves, then you better get used to meaningless, mindless tasks that ask nothing of you but obedience. The boss, the haves, will tell you that working at these crummy soul devouring jobs is fine. What would they know about what you do though? It is not a matter of them being any less hard working but it is a matter of having something to show for it. If you work at a restaurant and you can’t even afford to eat there they pay you so little then what is the point? It gets to the point where thinking physically hurts. It breaks you just as bad as your job does. You think of all the things that you gave up, that you let slip by and you think never again will I let that happen, but it is too late. You have already buttered the buns. You have dropped them in the toaster. You have placed them on the tray. Put the two pickles on the bun, then the filet, and then the top part of the bun. You have wrapped the sandwich and placed it in the warming drawer until you throw it up for the next customer to devour or for it to get thrown away because it has been the warmer to long and has grown hard and unpleasant and unwanted.