Job #17 

Benjamin Schmitt

After the twenty-four-year-old founder of the startup he worked for had a nervous breakdown and abruptly sold the company, John had to find a new job. He called all his old associates but times were tight and no one could offer him anything. As the weeks went by, desperation moved in and began strutting confidently around the house in an ill-fitting bathrobe, so John spent more and more time considering jobs he never would have even looked at before. One morning he awoke to his deceased father’s voice drunkenly crowing at the dawn in a distant cornfield and he decided to accept an entry-level position at a fast food restaurant. This was an enormous relief to his wife, whose part-time catering job didn’t pay enough to feed and shelter their family of five. At work, he was the oldest person slinging burgers and fries by twenty years. For the first few days he found himself depressed about his fall to such a lowly station and filled with bitterness at the youthful hopes of his coworkers. His own hope felt more like the dread inside a Las Vegas casino, while their hope followed its every teenage pronouncement with clanging, trailing bells. Only after witnessing and experiencing the verbal abuse of the customers towards the staff was John able to move past this. It took some time and quite a few angry misunderstandings but once they got to know each other, John and his coworkers would often laugh together at a stupid customer or a peculiar situation and in those moments he felt that there were no such things as generations, only gusts of humanity shaking an eternal tree that constantly dropped fruits of mirth and sadness. 

hot Harry Rajchgot