Lower Expectations

Spider-kid

(8 Min Read)

My first ever job is at a McDonald’s not too far from home. I get a call one day, out of the blue, from one of the managers saying they’d received my application and want me for an interview. I am a shy 15 or 16-year old and I agree to the interview, even though I have not sent in an application. I later discover that my Mum put the application in for me because I am old enough to have a job and any child of hers should know the pain and suffering of hard work and being chronically underpaid or something like that, I am not listening as she explains it, I am trying not to cry because I don’t want to work at McDonald’s. I think it’s embarrassing and I don’t want anyone at school to know. I go to the interview because I have no choice and they give me a written test that has the question: if a fry fell on the floor, what would you do?

a)     Put it back with the rest and give it to a customer

b)    Eat it

c)     Throw it away

I get the job. Eventually, kids at school start to find out that I work there but they all say they hear McDonald’s is really good to have on your resume because then future employers know you can work hard. This, I hate to tell you, is a lie. Fast food is a trap. If you have children, please do not let them work in fast food. I do not learn any skills, I do not climb the ladder to management and I do not get another job out of it. I am abused, both verbally and physically, both by managers, other staff and customers. I feel stress beyond what any teenager should feel at all times of the day when I am working or even just thinking about working. And I am severely underpaid for what I do, not only because the job does not pay well, but because the managers digitally alter our start and end times to ensure they can keep labour costs down and impress their manager who wants to impress their manager who wants to impress their manager who tells their manager in some office somewhere who doesn’t care because that fifty dollars a week they’re stealing from you is just going on the pile.

I work in the kitchen for some time before the café opens up. When it does, I put my hand up immediately to work there instead of the kitchen and they let me. I am ecstatic because in the kitchen it’s hot and it stinks and I burn myself all the time. My first day in the café, one of the older boys, Freddy, trains me. He is very relaxed and as we begin, he makes a point to picking up that morning’s newspaper from the counter and keeping it with him. I wonder if he thinks I will pick this up so fast that he will have nothing to do and will therefore have time to read the paper. I learn, quickly, that that is not why he has the newspaper. Each time I make a mistake, Freddy, holding the newspaper, rolled up in his fist, hits me on the head with it and hisses, ‘Bad August!’ I lose track of how many times he hits me on the first day. The second day, I don’t bother counting. We are in full view of other workers and of the dining room with customers but no one ever says anything to stop it from happening. One day, one of the boys from the back tells me it must have been a really bad day, judging from the quantity of ‘whomps’ he heard. That is the word he uses to describe the sound of the newspaper hitting my head. I agree. It was a bad day. I have such a headache.

Usually, my shift starts at 5:30 in the morning, but I arrive at 4:30 because the opening jobs cannot be done in the half hour management insists it can. The drive, perhaps eight minutes in total down the long, dark, lonely streets see some bleak times. Often, I think if I close my eyes and take my hands off the wheel, I might crash and not have to go into work. If I break something, I might be off for a few weeks. And if I die, I would never have to go back. I’d never be yelled at by my manager, Stacey, for being ‘too slow’.

I wouldn’t have to deal with Cleo, the girl whose mother comes in every day with her to work and sits at a table for hours with the other ‘regulars’, who I can tell hate her even from where I work across the dining room in the café.

Cleo’s mum hangs around me and talks to me every day. She tells me which of the children working at McDonald’s should date each other, which of the girls behind the counter is definitely a slut and how none of the girls are as attractive as her daughter. Several times a week she asks me if I think Cleo is pretty and I say, ‘yes, very pretty’. No more, no less, because I feel either elaborating or underselling will invite further conversation. Despite the public knowledge that at this time in my life I am a gay man, Cleo’s mum seems to have picked up (correctly) that I am actually bisexual. She wears lowcut tops and asks me if I like big boobs and to this I say, ‘I’m at work. I can’t answer that question.’ She continues anyway, saying that I probably do and that it’s a shame Cleo is flat-chested currently, but that in time, she’ll inherit her mother’s genes and really ‘fill out’ that uniform.

Cleo’s mum invites me over for dinner often. She mentions how her husband goes to bed early and Cleo’s room is at the opposite end of the house from hers and maybe I’d like to stay the night. The three of us could even cuddle up on the couch and watch a film together. Her and Cleo are the best of friends and anyone who’s interested in her daughter has to have her mother’s approval, but she’s already decided she likes me, so I don’t need to worry about that.

Another time she tells me that Cleo can make me forget that I’m bisexual. I am terrified. Sometimes it seems like she’s talking about herself rather than Cleo and I don’t know which is worse, the adult hitting on me or the adult pimping out her daughter to me.

One night, the twins at work are having a birthday party. They’re turning 15 and they invite me. I am 18 and I decline because I don’t want to go to a child’s birthday party, but they really want me to go, so I promise I will stop by. I have underestimated this children’s birthday party: It is loud, raucous, there is a lot of alcohol. The second I arrive, Cleo, already very drunk, pulls me aside and says she loves me. She’s always loved me. We should be together. I decline. I do not know how many drinks she has and I think she is 16 and I am very uncomfortable. I excuse myself and go to the bathroom to regroup. She’ll forget by tomorrow that she said anything and it’ll be fine. I’m only stopping in, so I can avoid her for another ten minutes, then leave. I open the bathroom door to re-enter the party and there’s Cleo’s mum, taking up the width of the doorframe. She puts one hand on my chest and pushes me back into the cramped bathroom, scrambling inside with me, turning and locking the door. We are so close and I can see the way her bright blue eyeshadow has settled in the wrinkles above her eyes. I wonder how old she is. I wonder if she is in love with me too.

‘Why don’t you love Cleo?’ she yells. It might not have been a yell under regular circumstances but with the loud music outside and our close proximity, it has become a yell.

I do not know what reason I give, though there are many: ‘she’s a child’; ‘everyone knows dating her means dating you too’; ‘she doesn’t actually love me, you’ve obviously put her up to it’. Whatever reason I give, if any, she relents enough to let me slip past her and out of the bathroom. Cleo is right outside the door. I push past her and head out to my car. I turn the engine on and Cleo runs out of the house after me, screaming my name into the night, drawing the attention of most of the party. She’s crying as she clambers onto the road, lying down on the asphalt in front of my car so I can’t drive away. ‘Why don’t you love me?’ Her mother is watching from the front lawn. I hate the attention this is drawing. I hate that I’m more worried about how heartless I might be coming across by ignoring Cleo rather than about how she’s feeling. I reverse because nothing is blocking my car from doing that and I drive away.

The next time we work together, Cleo apologises to me. I accept her apology because she’s 16 and is being manipulated by an adult. I tell her, ‘Your mum is going to ruin your life.’

***

One of the managers tells me I’ve done a good job. She gives me a sticker, puts it on my apron and walks away. When I look down, it’s a little smiley face and underneath she’s written, ‘thank you for shaving’. The day prior I had shaved for the very first time. I didn’t know anyone else could see the fuzz on my upper lip and I definitely didn’t know it was causing offence.

***

My manager stopped by the café to let me know that someone has made a mess in the toilets. I nod as I am making coffees, unsure what this has to do with me. She goes on to describe it and I am horrified. It seems someone has intentionally misused the toilet, or they did not make it to the bowl in time. I feel sick, trying to concentrate on the coffees and not picture it. Perhaps annoyed that I am not offering to clean it up, she tells me to finish up here, then clean it. I stop pouring milk, my mouth hanging open and I hear the word ‘No’ escape me. Her head whips around, a glare bearing down on me. I have never said no to her before. I’m not sure I’ve ever said no to anyone before. She badgers me continually, to the point where I am crying, but I am still saying no. No, I will not do it. They can call someone. We have cleaners, or they can get someone else out, someone who does this sort of thing, but I don’t do it. I am sobbing. She swears and rolls her eyes because I am pathetic. She gets someone else to do it and I feel such immense guilt that I apologise to him because if I had said yes, if I had done what I was told, then he wouldn’t have had to do it, so in a way, it was like it was my fault he had to do it. Afterwards, I am exhausted from standing up for myself. It is so new, it tired me out.

***

One day, my manager tells me I’m running a birthday party that day in the little party space we have next to the playground. I tell her I don’t know how to do kids’ parties, I’ve never done them before and she tells me I’ll work it out. I do not think this is an accurate estimation of my skills in either party planning, entertainment or child-minding, but she ‘believes in me’, which I take to mean she would prefer it if I shut up, put on a hat shaped like a birthday cake and spent the next twenty minutes researching how to paint faces.

I gather supplies from around the place, pulling together a makeshift ‘pass the parcel’ from anything I can find and attempting to resuscitate the dried up face paints I found in the back of a cupboard I’ve never seen before. I feel like a parent whose lost their job, doing their best on Christmas morning to make everything seem normal.

The kids are very into face painting. I do not recall the last time I held a paintbrush. The birthday boy wanted to be Spider-man.

That evening, sitting down to dinner with my family, my older brother said he was at work that day, at a hardware store up the road from the McDonald’s and ‘I saw a kid with the worst Spider-man face paint I’ve ever seen in my life’.