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So, I’m standing
there, I’m repeating this sh*t- ‘Hi, may I take your order please’
and I realised that I wasn’t even
aware of what I was doing. For the first time I became aware that I’d spent
so long in the fast food industry, as a
pizza chef, at KFC, Burger King, that I’d internalised a complete way of
behaving, that there was a section of my
personality that was defined by these men that get rich out of other people’s
misery. These men that own businesses
and get poor kids to cook food and clean sh*t and would insist they got fu***ed
up the anus if there was enough
money in it, these men had actually changed me, I was... I can only describe
it as robotic, because I was standing
there just repeating this mindless crap to some customer that can’t even
imagine that people like me could have a
name... and it was just, horrific, I’d been penetrated by the productive
process. And I just stopped dead and this
large customer stood there with a few grubby dollars clutched in his podgy hands
and he stared at me, like to say
‘what the f**ks wrong with you bi**h’, he stared at my frozen expression
like he wasn’t aware I could see him. He
stared the same way that men stare at your cleavage, the way they think you
can’t see their face just because they’re
staring at your breasts. “And a shake” he said very deliberately and
I looked at him hard and I saw he was
perspiring, like this was painful for him too and I looked at the clock and
somehow it was blurred, like it might be if
the hands were whirring round and round. And I was just suddenly struck by the
horror of this, by the tragedy of it.
We were all there suffering to different degrees and why? It was desperate,
I’d been doing this sh*t for years and it
was like I’d just had enough or my dignity had caught up with me, or something,
and I just stood there. And the guy
spoke in a much softer tone, almost friendly, really quiet like he was whispering,
desperate for me to share a secret
but afraid of asking too loudly, he just said “are you Okay?” and
he said it in a sweet southern droll and his voice
kind of cracked. I wanted to hug him. So, I said, “no, but don’t worry
I’m going to be fine.” And I put his food
down and turned away and I ran through the kitchen past bun stacks and fryers
and glaring adverts, and I started
running because I could feel the tears coming and my eyes must have been red
because everyone stared at me like
people do when you cry and they’re awkward and don’t know what to
do or where to look. And I ran faster and the
tears exploded, I’d forgotten how to cry like this, they just gushed and
they were running down my face. I tried to
wipe them away at first then I just ran and felt them on my cheeks and dripping.
It was the most incredibly powerful
feeling.
I locked myself in the
girls toilet and I sat down on the loo and I realised that I’d pulled my
skirt up and my knickers
down as though I was really going to use the toilet and I realised I’d
just done it to make it look right, so I had a
legitimate excuse to be away from my till. And that really scared me because
they can’t see you when you’re locked
in a cubicle but they don’t need to, they’re inside you. And that’s
horrific. You end up internalising their strategies
of control to such an extent that you almost feel naughty if you’re in
the toilet and not unrinating.
By this time I’d
stopped crying. I was consumed with rage, a powerful surging tsunami of anger.
And I swore to
myself right there and then that from that second onward I would live with out
dead time, I would savour every
second of my life, I would laugh, and love and live, and live, and live every
minute with an intensity and a passion
that most people rarely find in all their lives. I was going to want to never
sleep, I was going to wish the days would
never end. For a brief second I envisaged a future so beautiful I cannot describe
it in words. But a dream, no matter
how impassioned, is only transient...
There was a sharp, angry
rap on the door. “What you f***ing doin?”. I was silent, dead silent.
The rap came again,
angrier, louder, like he was trying to come through the door. So, silently,
I slid my pants up adjusted my skirt, wiped
my eyes and just sat there. “Come on, f**k! What’s wrong? Come on?
Have you seen the queue?”. And I just sat
there breathing really deeply, slowly, trying not to breathe too loudly. “You
alive in there?” And I thought, oh if you
knew how alive, if you could experience what it means to live, even if it was
only in a dream, it would change you
forever. And I pitied him, obsessed with his greasy stinking food, his grubby
counter, he stank of fast food, and
greed and misery and oppression and exploitation. Poor, pathetic, wretched creature.
He revolted me. And I heard
someone else with the manager- “what’s up?”
“B**ch gone and locked herself in the toilet”. And I flung the door
open and I can’t explain why but I grabbed this
bit of a mop, like a handle, and I grabbed that ba***rd and I flung him up against
the wall and I put the mop handle
up against his face and screamed at him in rage “fu**ing c**t F U **E R
!”.
He just trembled, his
lip wibbling pathetically and the other guy, Derek, he just gawked in shock.
And I’m standing
there with this guy by the throat and for some reason I thought of the large
customer I’d been serving and I wondered
if he was still standing there, you know? Still gawking, waiting for his fucking
vanilla shake, or whatever it was.
And it was absurd and I laughed out loud, totally inappropriately. And I laughed
at the manager, he was just
pathetic, he was dead. I could have beaten him to death with the mop handle
and I honestly don’t think he would
have lost anything. I don’t believe you can kill people who have never
really lived.
But anyway, I just threw
the mop handle down, grabbed my coat and walked out of there, swaggered out
of there,
smiling inside and out like I’d forgotten how to. I didn’t glance
back at the place. And outside I remember it was
this wonderful sunny day, it probably wasn’t warm, but in the sun it was
like the middle of summer. And I bathed in
it, I felt like I was emerging from a dungeon, like I hadn’t seen the light
in years.
Three days later I was
sat in a disciplinary hearing saying how sorry I was, losing my dignity and
grovelling for that
miserable job back. It’s like I said- a dream, no matter how impassioned
is only transient, and when I thought about
having to move out of my house, I didn’t know where I’d go and the
credit card bill came and I couldn’t afford to
pay it as it was and... well this is what this system does to us. Any one who
says we choose to do a job, well, they
are either the most ignorant people on earth, or they’ve got rich daddies,
or more likely, both. They asked me “what
were you so upset about anyway?” The idiocy, the pointlessness, the boredom,
wasting my life, living to make them
rich, selling myself, feeling violated, crying, hurting, knowing there must
be something better, praying the bad days
will end. “I think it was just cause of the time of the month, you know”.
They all looked at their feet but I caught the
suppressed perverted smirks. The manager had just reported that I’d swore
at him and walked off my shift because
he’d been too macho to admit I’d had him up against the wall in fear
of his life. And I wore a little skirt and stuck
my bum and breasts out and batted my lashes. I might as well have offered to
f**k them, and why not, I sold myself
every day I worked in that place.
That’s what this system does to us, it strips us of our humanity, living like that, it’s undignified.
I got out of there eventually,
moved to another unbearable job, then out completely when I had a gorgeous baby
boy.
I’m with him full time now. It’s harder work but it’s something
you do for love, because you want to. But I’m even
poorer now, I was wrong when I said I was ‘completely’ out. I’ll
never escape the system, none of us will... we have
to destroy it. I haven’t forgotten that dream.
Copyright, Lisa 2002, Dedicated to McDonalds Workers Resistance and all who fight for freedom