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For a year and a half when I was going to UT, I worked at a Wendy's. It was a terribly unprestigious job, but without more experience or a college degree, I was stuck. I was working my way through school, so I dealed with it. I was a fairly good employee, quick on the cash register and efficient at the position they called pocket on drive thru (the person who puts food in bags and hands them out the window). My managers soon developed a routine of putting me on cash register during the lunch rush and pocket in the afternoons. Sometimes I did order taker on drive thru instead. Either way, however quick I was, delays inevitably arose, sometimes from other employees, usually from customers, especially in drive thru. People would take their sweet time sitting in line, fiddling with change and fussing and arguing over orders, not leaving as soon as they'd checked their bags, etc. There was a timer over the second window at the drive thru. From the moment they arrived at the menu till the moment they rolled away from the second window, the timer would click off the seconds. We were supposed to get cars out in under 100 seconds, ideally less than that. During the lunch rush it was supposed to be only 75 seconds, but that rarely happened. If a car sat in the drive thru longer than 100 seconds, the timer would beep loudly every few seconds as if to say, "Get a move on." Only, none of us employees really cared. The management, of course, decided that we needed a bit of encouragement in getting the cars out faster. So one of them, early one morning before any employees had arrived, popped the cover off the timer and turned the volume on the speaker all the way up and stuck it there. For the next couple of days, we all had to listen to the painfully loud beeping, and then the employees started wearing earplugs. Thusly the employees couldn't hear each other or the customers, the bitching continued, and the drive thru time failed to improve. After a few days of this, I decided that something had to be done. It was a Sunday afternoon, and as was usually the case on Sunday afternoons, very slow. I had just clocked out and was getting ready to leave. I gave the drive thru timer a parting glare, and then a thought of sabotage struck me. I glanced furtively around and thought to myself, 'Hmm. No customers, no cars, no security cameras, and the only other employees here are all in the back . . . ' With another surreptitious glance around, I popped the cover off of the timer, located the small part that controlled the speaker, snapped it off, and stole it. I then hastily reassembled the timer, made sure it looked all right, and got the hell out. I later threw away the incriminating evidence that I'd snapped off and pocketed. The next day, of course, everyone wanted to know how the Timer from Hell™ had mysteriously broken. I remained silent. |