Klee - How do you create a legacy from a milk shake mixer?

I hadn’t stepped into a McDonalds in over a decade, which is strange, because I’m sixteen, and I’ve spent all of my life in the U.S. of A. Stepping through the two sets of doors that reminded me of those airlock compartments at the entrance of underwater cities and space pods I smelled bleach and grease, and soon I felt like both were sinking into my fingernails. I don’t know if the burning was a visceral reaction on the part of my long-cultivated rejection of McDonalds and “everything it stands for” or if I’d peeled too many clementines on the bus.

I don’t why exactly I decided to apply. It was easy, though. The one-page application and paragraph on the benefits of employment is kept right under the cash register, next to a tazer and big red button. I had a pencil in my back pocket but it failed to produce lead as I stood at the counter and clicked it. The manager offered me a pen and I said gracias out of habit. He laughed and said something I probably don’t have the vocabulary to understand, but I know he wasn’t asking me if I could speak. I’ve got that one down. “Un poco, solamente mi gramatica es terrible,” I would have responded.

I checked “crew” on the section asking which job the applicant is interested in. I don’t really know what it entails, but I guess that continues this motif of not knowing how/why/if.

I have an interview tomorrow at 10. I can’t really tell the truth, so I’m coming up with some bullet point lies. Which is to say, I don’t know if I’d get this dream job if I told them I’d applied on a whim, wondering what it would be like to work at a place culture has been so wrapped around and shaped by, so much the antithesis of what my mama taught me.

I’VE ALWAYS FELT A SPECIAL CONNECTION TO MCDONALDS. I WANT TO BE PART OF THE BIGGEST FOOD RETAILER IN THE WORLD. I COVET THE HATS.


The uniform is free.