Week 5 Revisited: We Name the Guilty Man!

If you've ever worked in the service industry you know that at some point that little touch of mischief starts to get at the people you work with. Burger King employees are not exempt from this of course and this little but seemed to bite really hard one late afternoon in the late spring of 1999. I'd been working for the company a good portion of my senior year, it was something of an attempt on my part to do the 'adult' thing and do the proverbial 'get a hair cut and a real job' sort of deal. My mom had fully endorsed this of course seeing it as a step in the right direction. What she, or I for that matter, hadn't endorsed is the store having me close on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; the resulting work load and getting out around one in the morning was taking an obvious and heavy toll on my school work. Thus it had come to pass that I had put in my two weeks notice to focus on trying to get my happy self graduated and now found myself on my last day of work, bored out of my gourd.

There were three of us on at the time, a guy named Tim was in the kitchen with my while my friend, then manager, Kevin was kicking around up front doing managerial type things while us crew member types tried to busy ourselves with cleaning, stocking product and just generally appearing to be working. This of course is a skill that has been mastered by many in the customer service field, if only to avoid confrontations with the higher ups or to just generally save one's sanity from the slow times that permeate short bursts of commercial madness. It was during one of these times that I glanced at Tim and grinned. To his credit, Tim didn't really know what I was planning so he just followed along behind me as I went over to the ice bin. You see, when you throw ice cubes into a fry vat it does some pretty cool things: The ice rapidly turns from solid, to liquid, to gas at an accelerated pace causing the oil in the vat to bubble as the vaporized H2O is released back into the air. Like everyone else I'd played around with throwing one or two in the vat...but not a whole hand full! As I fished out a generous helping of ice cubes Tim screwed up his tanned, hispanic features in confusion. It was kind of comical when you put the streak of ketchup that marred his side burns into the mix.

With quick steps I made my way over to the fryer, Tim close on my heels, and tossed my ill gotten hand full of ice into the fry vat. My now partner in crime made an obligatory exclemation of "oh shit!" while we stepped back and watched as the first bubbles began to roll at the surface of the vat. With object fascination we watched as the oil began to froth and boil, the evaporated water exiting each bursting bubble with a hot snap or crack. It looked like a bottle of Pepsi that had just been dropped and opened up, all carbonation and frothing bubbles, except that these bubbles were about three hundred and fifty degrees and nearly boiling out over the confines of the vat walls.

This, of course, brought about quite a bit of noise, as ten gallons of frothing liquid is want to do and Kevin came dashing around the corner, clip board in one hand, pencil raised in another, his pale sweating face twisted in a look of consternation "Who did this?!" his tone was sharp and his eyes wild. All the while Tim and I are sniggering in our corner of the kitchen, of course the mirth was not meant to last and my co culprit eventually pointed at me as an indication of guilt. With no where else to go I grinned again and raised my hand.

Kevin raised his pencil and bapped me on the nose with the eraser, then walked away shaking his head. It was my last day after all and I suppose there wasn't much else he could do.