Gene McCormick- A Poem & Art

Overtime At The Fast Food Restaurant

A hundred extra pounds doesn’t slow down her job performance as an inside order taker working the restaurant’s fast food counter, nor does the fact that English is her second—a distant second—language but a simple smile can’t cover for her chronic inattentiveness to customer’s orders and the consequent need for the order to be repeated as stubby fingers punch wrong register keys, thwarting her desire to well-earn a marginally above minimum wage and to keep an impatient line from blocking the aisle and there is always the hungry young impatient customer who lacks understanding of the stresses put on a seventh grade scholar by having to learn a complicated, obtuse key punch system long ago eliminating the need or use of an old-fashioned order pad and manually scribbled orders on which “Cheeseburger loaded hold onions, small fries, coffee with five creams” was somehow deciphered by the cooks (food baggers) and making excusable the fact her mind now throbs with anticipation of meeting the assistant night manager out back in his 4x4 once their shifts are over and after she wipes perspiration from her forehead and from the darkish down across her upper lip.

Brief Bio: Gene McCormick holds the Illinois state record for eating 94 McDonald's double cheeseburgers in one hour.