It takes a special kind of malcontent to get fired from a minimum-wage job. I am that malcontent.
I work at a fast-food establishment that shall remain nameless. I'm your basic wage slave—the guy who's busy thinking about playing Halo instead of concentrating on the burger that's being reduced to charcoal right in front of him. It's not that I'm incompetent, mind you. It's just that I stopped caring. After a certain point, it's more about survival than anything. Face it—man was not meant to watch French fries cook for eight hours at a clip. The mind wanders. You zone out; you think of other things. You start counting the hours, then minutes until you're free to go. If you're lucky, they'll fire you and release you from the mind-numbing drudgery you've become accustomed to.
Today, I got lucky.
"Hanson!" my manager called to me as I was wiping down my station, a red bucket of sanitizer by my side. I heard him, but didn't bother to acknowledge him. I'm not his monkey. He doesn't own me, not for minimum wage. I make him work for my attention, which I'm sure frustrates him to no end.
"Hanson!" he barked again, coming closer. I looked up, giving him my best "Who me?" expression. "Yes, you, Chuck Hanson! I want to see you in my office—now!"
My manager was a real knuckle-dragger named Peter. Peter had to be pushing fifty, though I never knew his exact age. Gray-haired and balding, he was the kind of person who enjoys throwing his weight around. I think he gets off on having all the teenagers and twenty-somethings working under him cower in fear when he shouts. It works on a lot of the high school kids who have never had a job before, but I figure the worst he can do is fire me, and it's not like my next job is going to pay any less.
I'd been expecting this for a few weeks now. Actually, I was surprised it took this long. I can usually tell when I'm about to get canned. People stop looking you in the eye. Conversations suddenly halt when you walk by. You're a walking ghost and you don't even realize it, unless you know what to look for. Having been through the process on multiple occasions, I've become pretty good at picking up the signs. At least it lets me plan a dramatic exit.
"Have a seat, Hanson," Peter began, gesturing into his too-small office. I sat in an uncomfortable chair as he continued. "I think you know why you're here. I'm letting you go. This will be your last shift here." Peter started to drone on about the things I'd supposedly done wrong: not showing up on time, not paying attention, and disrespecting management—the usual bullshit. I took the opportunity to shift my weight so I could fish my cigarettes and lighter out of my pants pocket. I pulled out a lone cigarette and lit it.
"What are you doing?! There's no smoking allowed in the store!" Peter exclaimed, obviously aghast. I took a long drag, allowing the smoke to waft upward as I exhaled slowly.
"You're already firing me," I said. "There's no reason for me to be uncomfortable." I took another puff, causing the end of my cigarette to glow bright orange for a second. "What are you going to do, fire me twice?"
"Just get the fuck out of here, all right?!" Peter spat back, incredulous.
"With pleasure," I said coldly. "You think I want to sit in a shitty chair in your tiny office and listen to you berate me while I make six bucks an hour? Not likely. And what kind of jackass treats a bunch of teenagers like shit just so he can feel good about himself?" Peter looked dumbfounded. He was clearly not used to being talked to this way. "Yeah, I notice how you treat everyone here," I continued, flicking a little ash onto Peter's desk. "You treat us like shit. You think it helped to yell at Sarah in front of everyone just because some customer with a drastically overstated sense of self-importance thought she was taking too long to ring up her order? It's still her first week on the job! You damn near made her cry. That's why nobody wants to work for you. You should hear what we say about you behind your back."
I figured that would give him something to think about for a while, so I stood and pushed my way past Peter, a trail of smoke following me past the walk-in freezer and out the back door. A wave of relief washed over me. I was now free of the grills and grease traps. I was ready to move on, anyway. There's only so long you can do such a soul-sucking job, and I know I'd reached my limit.
The warm July evening air hit me as I walked across the parking lot towards my car. I hopped in and gunned the motor. Pulling out onto the main road, I watched the source of my despair recede in my rearview mirror. I rolled down my window to allow the fumes from my still-smoldering cigarette drift up into the evening sky. I sighed. My car, a dilapidated little rice-burner I'd dubbed The Rustbucket, had the annoying habit of breaking down on me, as older cars with over150,000 miles on them are wont to do. Soon, I'd have to find another job to stave off the inevitable bills. For now, though, I just wanted a little peace.
* * * * * * * *
I should probably pause her and explain a few things, because I'm sure I come off sounding like I'm some kind of chain-smoking jerk. First of all, I don't chain smoke. I go through a pack maybe once a month. It's not something I do every day; just something I do to take the edge off now and then. It's a little habit I picked up in high school, but I rationalize it by telling myself that I hardly ever do it. Secondly, I'm really not a jerk. I do, however, have a low tolerance for people who don't have any respect for me. If that makes me a jerk, then so be it, but I don't think it does. I just can't kowtow to jackasses, that's all. Not for minimum wage. If the company doesn't care about me, then why should I give a damn about it?
* * * * * * * *
I made the ten-minute trip back home in a little over seven minutes. I suppose my foot was a little heavy on the accelerator. I swung The Rustbucket into the driveway and killed the engine. I trudged up the walkway to the door and unlocked it. The house was dark, except for a faint noise coming from the bedroom at the top of the stairs—Winter's room.
Winter is my sister. She's 19, two years younger than I am. She and I have always had a pretty friendly relationship. I know that a lot of people have a really antagonistic relationship with their siblings, but Winter and I have always gotten along. I suppose I'm lucky that way. I don't know if I could deal with all the drama that so many people have to deal with when it comes to brothers and sisters.
I knocked on the door. "I'm home," I called out.
"Hey there, Bro," Winter called back from behind the closed door. I could hear voices in her room. It sounded like the she was watching TV. I walked past her door to my room and shut the door. I turned on the lights, flopped into my chair with a sigh, and fired up my computer. After a day like today, there was only one thing I could think of to do: find some porn, masturbate, and then call it an early night. I pulled my pants off and threw them into a crumpled ball in the corner of my room. Next, I slipped out of my work shirt and balled that up as well. It landed on top of my wadded-up pants. Finally, off came my underwear, which slid to the floor. I sat back down in my chair, nude, and began browsing the myriad porn sites available online. In just a few minutes, I found some nice pictures of some cute young amateur that got my blood flowing. I really like the "girl next door" look, and this girl had it. She had a little meat on her bones and was fully displaying her wares in a series of photos. I chose one where she was prominently spreading the lips of her bald pussy for the camera. The picture filled the screen as my hand drifted to my rapidly stiffening cock. My fingers brushed against it as I began to fantasize what it would feel like to fuck her. I could imagine her soft skin moving beneath me as I slipped my cock into her tight-looking cunt. I paid close attention to her dark eyes as she smiled and looked back at me through the computer screen. My cock was fully hard now. I reclined a bit in my chair to get more comfortable and begin pumping my cock harder with my hand. Just then, the door opened.
"Hey, Bro, I was just wondering if I could borrow—" Winter's words were cut off by the gasp that escaped her throat. I gasped too, caught in mid-stroke. "What are you doing?" she asked. It's a dumb question, but sometimes we say silly things when our brains can't quite process what we're seeing. I let it slide. I was too busy looking for something to cover myself with. I finally spied my underwear, which were still resting near my feet and quickly snatched them and used them to shield my engorged cock from Winter's view.
There's not much to say in a situation like this. What can I do? I certainly can't deny it. Nor I can't very well say, "It's not what it looks like!" either. I've got porn on my computer, I've got my swollen cock in my hand, and my hand is moving up and down the shaft. It's exactly what it looks like.
I voiced the first thing that popped into my head. "GET OUT!" I yelled, surprising even myself with the angry tone of my voice.
Winter stared for a few seconds more, mouth agape, before she regained her senses. "I'm sorry," she stammered quickly, and shut my door. As quickly as she'd come, she was gone again.
The shock was great enough that I was rapidly losing my erection. I'd never had Winter walk in on me in the middle of masturbating before. I shook my head. Suddenly, masturbating was the furthest thing from my mind. I sat for a long minute, then put my underwear back on, followed by shorts and a clean t-shirt. I fired up Halo on my XBox, figuring that perhaps the mindless destruction would clear my head of what had just happened.
As it turned out, it didn't work. I was feeling very distracted as my mind kept replaying the events that had just occurred on an endless loop. My on-screen character was picked off several times in a row because I found myself only halfway paying attention to the action. After about an hour or so of my gamely trying to concentrate, there was a knock at my door. I jumped.
"Hey, Bro?" It was Winter again. "You decent? Can I come in?"
