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Twas a normal day at Five Guys…or so Stephen thought it would be.
He stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes widened slightly on horror at the scene before him.
-5 minutes earlier-
“Hey how can I help you?” A man with the body of a prepubescent child asked.
“Uh, can I just get a cheeseburger, nothing else on it, a small vanilla shake, and a kid’s fry,” Stephen replied.
The guy nodded and tapped some things on the screen. “Yeah, so you want the large fry?”
“No no, the KID’S fry. Smallest fry you have.”
“Right, so three scoops of fries it is!”
Stephen gritted his teeth and glanced at the man’s name tag reading “Matt”.
“Listen to what I’m saying, Matt. I want a Kid’s. Fry. The tiniest amount of fries you have. Give me 5 SINGULAR fries if you must.”
Matt smiled. “Yeah, I gotcha!” Then he turned and shouted towards the back of the kitchen. “JEREMY, FOIST UPON THIS MAN FIVE ORDERS OF THE LARGE FRY!”
A man with the most glorious mustache Stephen had ever seen nodded solemnly, wielding a giant metal French fry scooper in his hands. He then grabbed a brown paper bag and began to stuff it full of the salty food.
Stephen stuttered going back and forth between yelling for Jeremy to stop, and asking if Matt was possibly an idiot.
The tiny man just smiled cheerfully saying that his order would be done soon and he owed $15.99.
Stephen just stared for a moment before giving up and pulling his wallet out, aggressively shoving his card into the reader.
Once he had his receipt, he stood to the side at the counter, seething, while waiting for his food.
He let his mind wander over the rest of the kitchen, and noticed towards the back a taller man with blond hair struggling with the milkshake machine.
Melted vanilla ice cream was dripping down the sides of the metal counter top as the man tried to catch it with his hands, obviously failing horribly.
He finally reached for paper towels next to him, trying to rip off a couple sheets, but it got stuck and within the next couple seconds, the man was overcome by enough paper towels to make an environmentalist have a nervous breakdown.
The man gathered the paper into his arms, and folded his torso over onto the milkshake covered surface, using his full body to wipe the paper towels back and forth, smearing the vanilla even more than before.
Stephen was pretty sure he wouldn’t be receiving his shake.
A yelp caused Stephen to look over to the fryer, where two women were working, one of them short with a brown pixie cut, the other tall with red hair.
The tall one was shaking a large bag of frozen fries directly into the hot oil, causing the boiling liquid to splatter all over the shorter one, which was the source of the previous cry of pain.
Stephen just shook his head to himself, wondering if this was his sign to just leave.
It definitely should have been.
Because in the next moment, a tall skinny man walked by the girls struggling with the fryer, and promptly slipped on a puddle of oil like he was a cartoon character stepping on a banana peel.
He slid across the entire kitchen, shrieking the entire way, arms flapping wildly, before crashing into a shorter black man who had his arms full of napkins, sending them both to the floor.
“ADAM! YOU’VE RUINED MY NAPKINS!”
“AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” The skinny man positively screamed bloody murder, holding onto his leg, which had smashed into the counter.
Stephen felt like he should call an ambulance, but was stopped when another man appeared from a back room, addressing the crowds of customers.
“Everything’s fine everyone! Go back to your food! And for your troubles, we’ll give everyone an extra scoop of fries, and Mallory here will make sure the relish is extra fresh!”
The guy swept his arm to the side, indicating a wavy haired blond woman clutching a lime green bottle, hovering over a line of hot dogs.
Her head shot up to look at the man. “I make no promises!” She told him ominously, and the guy gave a nervous smile before looking back to the customers.
“What I meant to say is, the relish will be extra CAREFULLY applied!”
A customer with a sour look on her face stepped up to the counter with a young boy by her side, to talk to the man that had been speaking to them all.
“Um, excuse me, I want to talk to your manager.”
The short haired girl struggling at the fryer whipped around. “OH THAT’S ME!”
Then she scurried to the counter. “How can I help you?” The woman asked.
“My son and I have been waiting for our food for over half an hour! The service here is atrocious!”
The man from before cut in. “Well, excuse me if it takes awhile to make fries with salt without the sodium! I’ve been in the back with my daughter’s chemistry kit trying to work that out for the last 20 minutes!”
“Jason, let me handle this!” The short haired woman said, and the guy, Jason, huffed before going back to the room he’d been in before.
“Listen, lady, you’re not gonna get sodium free salted fries, I suggest you leave now with a refund that can go towards a middle school education for yourself since the state funded one obviously failed you.”
Stephen’s mouth dropped open and he thought he may have fallen in love a bit right on the spot.
The huffy woman, gasped, before yanking her son by the arm and dragging him towards the door, not even waiting for the promised refund.
Stephen stared in a daze, at the manager, who was smiling in self satisfaction, barely realizing when the mustached man from way before, Jeremy, called his number.
“Here’s your food, man,” the guy said in a monotone, shoving over 3 bags, and a vanilla milkshake that looked simultaneously clumpy and runny.
Stephen sighed, wondering how he was ever going to eat all those fries.
A few minutes later he found himself in the car, unwrapping the cheeseburger he’d been craving all day, and bit into it, savoring the flavor.
Until he realized something was off.
It was covered in relish.