The random ramblings of a wanna-be author.

So Anna and Lexie had themselves convinced that the store is haunted by Jeanette, my manager who died in a car accident four months ago on wednesday.

It all started when I noticed that the clock in the lobby above the Pop-machine was fifteen minutes slower thne any other one in the store. I wrote Mike a note, telling him that he needed to change the batteries or something, and set it on his desk. A few minutes later, while I was beinging to stock some of the stuff in the kitchen, Anna and Lexie started screaming.

I go around the corner to see what the hell was going on and they were running away from the open cooler as fast as they could.

"There was someone there! I Swear it! and now the box of ice cream is on the floor upside down! I didn't do it!" Lexie was, needless to say, freaking out.

"Sam, we're being haunted!!" And so was Anna, apparently.

I couldn't help it, I laughed.

A few months ago, the first time I had closed, Ryder and I had Anna convinced that the place was haunted and she ran around poking pointy things into garbage cans to make sure that there wasn't anybody hiding in them. When I told Mike about it - he had watched the cameras and wanted to know what exactly it was we were doing - he laughed it said it was propbably Jeanette - she's never going to leave.

It made perfect sense, I see her all the time, and did then, so I started saying hi every time I saw her.

So when Anna and Lexie mentioned seeing somebody by the freezer, I said it like it was the most natural thing in the world: "Oh, it's Jeanette, she practically lived here, she's not going to leave."

Oops.

Anna ran passed me and started grabbing the extra containers that we put some of the toppings in up front. "Quick! Change the containers! She likes it when we do that!"

I shook my head and went back to my stocking, how long could it last?

By the end of the night, 'Jeanette' had moved chairs, opened doors, turned on water, started singing in the kitchen (okay, that one was me, but when they went to see who was in there, I had gone to get lettuce), become responsible for the clock discrepancy, and left foot prints all over the newly mopped floor. Oh, and she kept walking around the corner apparently.

Eventually, I had to call Mike to calm them down, but he was laughing to hard to let me hand the phone over. "She's bored," was all he said.

Anna and Lexie still think that she's just pissed at them.
 

Uh oh...so Nathan showed up, even though he wasn't working, and started goofing off. I was scraping the grill, and laughing at him...and not paying attention to what i was doing....so i stopped the scrapper thing, or i thought it did...

it ended up in the grease collection trough thing and i got splashed...most of it ended up on my arm, which is fine, and then rebounded - at least that's what i think happened, it was kinda fast - to my neck.

and now my neck's starting to blister....great. : /

Oh My God.

So Audry was sick yesterday. Ryan went to her house and left her a little envelope; in the envelope was a bullet casing with something like, 'Remembering happier times ~ Ryan'  engraved on it.

Well...

Audry's mom called the lady who manages the salon next to DQ. Lady orders food and asks Audry to bring it over, then questions her for like an hour, leaving me to cook alone during the lunch rush. Next thing you know, the salon lady had called the cops and Audry was talking to them in the parking lot.

They wanted her to press charges, but Audry is Ryan's only friend and she couldn't do that to him. She managed to talk them out of a restraining order because if she asked for one, Ryan would lose his job and have to change schools, not to mention that it would all come crashing down on her in some way or another.

The cops then went to Ryan's house and talked to him for like an hour. According to texts he sent Audry later, the spent the entire time telling him how socially inept he is and blah blah blah. It really wasn't anything we didn't know already, we were just amazed that he didn't.

The next text Audry got said something like, 'I never thought that I'd be a much of a freak in High School as I was in Middle School, today I found out that I was a stalker.'

We just couldn't figure out how he didn't know.

A few minutes later, the phone rang, since Ryan's number was on the caller id, Audry didn't want to answer, so Ryder did.

It was Ryan and he wanted to talk to me.

"Sam, can you do me a favor? Go into Mike office's and take a piece of paper from the printer. Leave Mike a note telling him that I'm putting in my two weeks. I don't want to come in and see Audry."

Well naturally, Audry and Ryder wanted to know what I was doing, so I explained. They were excited, amazed, shocked...take your pick.

Right after Audry joked about Ryan changing his mind and taking it back, he called.

"Sam, can you take my two weeks down? I'm going to think about it for a while."

Then the cops came back and told us that Ryan's not supposed to be making any type of contact with Audry and blah blah blah....

Other then that, work was boring.

But Ryan almost quit.

WOW

So this didn't exactly happen at work, but it's about work, so I'll put it under here.

After I got off last night, I got in the car and Mom looked at me. "So did Mike hire anybody to replace Jeanette yet?"

"Nobody that's lasted."

"What would he say if I applied?"

I stared at her for a couple of seconds. "He wouldn't hire you, I'd give you a bad recommendation, say you get made and yell a lot." I had completely spaced the fact that as she works at the bank that our paychecks come from, they knew each other and got along pretty well. "Besides, you'd only get like ten hours a week, what with the bank and all, and since you've never worked fast food before in you're life, minimum wage."

She looked thoughtful for a moment. "What's minimum wage again?"

"I think it just went up to $6.90."

"So that's $69 a week..."

She spent the rest of the ten minute ride home working out that with that and the raise she should be getting next month, she could put an extra $600 dollars on the car every month.

I told Mike that Mom wants a job and he just laughed...and handed me an application.

*headdesks*

Last night, I was working with Audry and Lexie. Later, Ryan came in, not surprising as he tends to follow Audry everywhere and if she's working, he'll come in at least once.

Ryan keeps to himself all shift. If he's working, he's always cooking, so he'll hide in the kitchen - even if we've only had like six orders all night - and won't say a word. He stalked Audry to the point the past several months to the point that she refuses to work with him and I always do.

Anyway.

Last night we were working and Ryan came in. He ordered food, then went in back and made it while Audry hid from him. After he made his food, he went out into the lobby and took his time eating it in one of the booths along the back wall, well out of sight of any of the cameras.

A little later, while I was in the back, cleaning the grill, Ryan asked Lexie a question. She couldn't understand him, so she had him repeat. This time, she heard him, or she thought that she did. What she heard was, "Is it all right if I read my math book?" Bewildered, she said yes then came in the back.

"Sam, Ryan just asked me if he could read his math book...that's odd even for him."

A little while later, Audry, who was still trying to avoid Ryan, decided that she wanted a blizzard, but didn't know what kind. So, we went up front to look at the menu and Ryan's sitting there in the same booth that he was earlier, CLEANING A RIFLE.

We didn't know what to do. Finally, after the lady from the salon next door and a couple other people came in, ordered, stared at Ryan the entire time and left, Audry kicked him out. "Ryan it has to go in your trunk, you're scaring people."

"Oh...well can I clean my little one?"

"Just leave 'em in your car and get out of here."

So, he made a blizzard and left.

The rest of us traded looks. "Call Mike?"

"Why didn't we do it before?"

"I don't know."

So we called Mike and about gave him a heart attack. Apparently, Ryan can get arrested just for having the gun on the street and he brought it in to a Dairy Queen!

We should have called the cops, but we were too confused to do much of anything, and it wasn't like he had any bullets or anything with him, he just wanted to clean it.

And I have to work with him tonight!

True story, Honestly!

So when I arrived at work on Tuesday, one of the girls I work with was sitting in our owner/manager's office talking to him on the phone. "Mike, none of them know how to close the kitchen, everyone else has plans tonight, and i am not working a double!"

Naturally, I wondered what had happened. Finally, Audry got off the phone and saw me standing there looking slightly confused. "Sam! You're here, good. Dan was fired. He didn't come in last night and he called earlier and said that he couldn't come in tonight or tomorrow because he had to move."

Dan was the new guy. He'd started a week and a half before and I hadn't yet had the chance to work with him and I hadn't really been looking forward to that shift due to some of the stories that I had heard from people who had worked with him.

"Oh," I said, "Cool...so is Mike coming in?"

"No, there was a fire in his house at three this morning, they're at his parents house, while his is cleaned. Everyone's okay, even the baby, he's just going to be gone a couple of days. Tonight though, you're closing."

"What?" Of course I was closing, I was working the 4 to close shift wasn't I? We called that 'closing' at my house, but at work, closing means that you're the one in charge that shift. You do all the cooking and make sure everything gets locked up. "Audry, I don't know how to clean the kitchen! And you want me to do it by my self?" Nobody else for my shift was there yet and if Dan wasn't coming in then it would just be me and Anna - she's never closed the kitchen either.

"Of course not, Ryder will stay until six or so when Lexie comes in. I'll show you how to close the kitchen now and Mike will call later to walk you through it."

So she did, and we made it through the shift okay. In fact, it was kinda fun. By five Ryder and I had Anna convinced that the store's haunted and we watched her run around the store, stabbing sissors into garbage cans in case somebody was hiding in them on camera. Lexie came, Ryder left.

Luckily for me, it was a slow day, so there wasn't a huge amount of food...or a whole lot to stock and clean up. Five minutes to closing, Mike called and walked me through what I had to do. It was pretty easy, especially since I'd seen it done just about every shift since the beginning of last May.

There was a tense moment when we couldn't find the key to lock up the money, but then Nathan, Anna's older brother and our other manager, showed up to take her home, and we discovered that he had accidently put it in his pocket earlier that day.

Thursday, when I got to work for my first morning shift in months, Mike was there, Dan had been scheduled to work that shift as well, and I discovered what had caused the whole mess.

On Monday, when Mike had left for the day, he had taken the dirty rags with him so that he could wash. Nothing unusual there, it's something he does at least once a week.

He had washed them, and dried them, then put them in their milk crate and set it my the door so he would remember to grab them on his way out Tuesday morning.  That night, the tempurature in the house was just right and the rags were packed together so tightly that something sparked and seeing as these were grease rags from a Dairy Queen, THEY LIT THEMSELVES ON FIRE.

The fireman said that they see spontaneous combustion all the time, but its usually wet paint rags by a heater vent or something. They had never seen something clean and dry just go up in flames.

I told Mike that this just proved that we need new rags.

True story, Honestly.