Lunch at the Fast Food Burger Place ...
I'd rather bring a sack lunch to work and eat in the lunch room while I read a book, but the lunch room has been taken over by a rather outspoken supervisor who talks constantly and makes it very difficult to read, so now, instead of just nuking a burrito in the lunchroom microwave, I've been eating lunch out, constantly searching for a spot that has good cheap food, yet also provides a suitable atmosphere for reading. Today, it was a fast foot burger joint.
There's music in the background. It sounds suspiciously like the dull, oppressive muzak that Nurse Ratchet constantly blasted at the patients in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
There's a constant influx and outflux of customers, they flow in and out of the burger joint like air flowing in and out of a huge lung.
Some customers are engaged in lively conversation, talking about workorders and procedures, or whether or not the gas station at Costco accepts cash or credit cards.
The employees in the burger joint seem like zombies. Most of them are recent Mexican immigrants, with sad, downcast eyes, who mumble bits of conversation that sounds suspiciously like it comes direct from some burger-joint-corporate-written master script. Things like, "Would you like to make that an extra extra large?" or "Have you tried our fried salads?" or "Next Customer Please."
While I'm eating and reading, I can hear a constant drone of shapeless, formless, tuneless background music, punctuated by the occaisional mumble of "Next Customer Please!"
People eating in groups are engaged in pointless conversations about work. There's always one guy who appears to be some sort of superior or supervisor who leads the conversation, keeping it on the topic of upcoming programs, and quickly squelching any complaints, questions or rumbles of disatisfaction.
People eating by themselves eye each other nervously while simultaneously trying not to see each other, fumbling with napkins or taking conspicuous, care about the way that they dip their french fries in catsup. Other solo diners look out the window or fiddle with their cell phones (Haven't any of these fools figured out the trick of bringing a book along with them to hide behind?)
When ten minutes to one PM rolls around, there's a sudden dive for the exits. People are almost trampling over each other to be the first one to the parking lot, the first one to their cars, the first one out the driveway.
Soon, the burger joint is quiet, and the only sound is the cashiers' now infrequent mumblings of "Next Customer Please" and the droning 101 Strings muzak in the background.
Damn, suburbia is an ugly place.
There's music in the background. It sounds suspiciously like the dull, oppressive muzak that Nurse Ratchet constantly blasted at the patients in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
There's a constant influx and outflux of customers, they flow in and out of the burger joint like air flowing in and out of a huge lung.
Some customers are engaged in lively conversation, talking about workorders and procedures, or whether or not the gas station at Costco accepts cash or credit cards.
The employees in the burger joint seem like zombies. Most of them are recent Mexican immigrants, with sad, downcast eyes, who mumble bits of conversation that sounds suspiciously like it comes direct from some burger-joint-corporate-written master script. Things like, "Would you like to make that an extra extra large?" or "Have you tried our fried salads?" or "Next Customer Please."
While I'm eating and reading, I can hear a constant drone of shapeless, formless, tuneless background music, punctuated by the occaisional mumble of "Next Customer Please!"
People eating in groups are engaged in pointless conversations about work. There's always one guy who appears to be some sort of superior or supervisor who leads the conversation, keeping it on the topic of upcoming programs, and quickly squelching any complaints, questions or rumbles of disatisfaction.
People eating by themselves eye each other nervously while simultaneously trying not to see each other, fumbling with napkins or taking conspicuous, care about the way that they dip their french fries in catsup. Other solo diners look out the window or fiddle with their cell phones (Haven't any of these fools figured out the trick of bringing a book along with them to hide behind?)
When ten minutes to one PM rolls around, there's a sudden dive for the exits. People are almost trampling over each other to be the first one to the parking lot, the first one to their cars, the first one out the driveway.
Soon, the burger joint is quiet, and the only sound is the cashiers' now infrequent mumblings of "Next Customer Please" and the droning 101 Strings muzak in the background.
Damn, suburbia is an ugly place.