Bitter Sweet

11. Bad Day

"A cheese burger and large fries and a coke," the muffled voice filled Stephanie's ears. She adjusted her headset as it started hurting her ears."Would you like to make it a combo?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Alright, so it's cheeseburger combo with large fries and a large coke, would that be all?"

"...ye...su..."

The static made her wince and she tapped the headset with her fingertips. "That'll be 7.89 at the window." She pressed a button to shut the infernal thing off and allow someone else take the drive thru orders.

She took a deep breath and the smell of French fries filled her nostrils. In other circumstances, her mouth would water with the delicious smell but since she was employed at the local fast food restaurant, it started to make her sick.

It was a slow day, Stephanie was tired and hot. She had a throbbing headache that she felt she could pass out in any minute.

"Stephanie?"

She turned to her right and saw her manager, who was a guy she went to high school with but never really spoke to and didn't seem to remember her, staring at her with frustration.

"I'm sorry, am I interrupting your daydreaming?" he sneered like an idiot.

Stephanie shook her head trying to push the pain aside. She remembered the guy being such a show off, so pretentious as if he was the greatest athlete in school, and now he was telling her what to do, a professional pastry chef. She reached for a bun rapidly. She had been doing this job for a week, the work was so mindless, she could do it with her eyes closed. She reached for the yellow tissue paper from the counter.

Grab buns, separate, mayonnaise, cheese, patty, pickles, bun and wrap.

"What's the matter with you? Are you drunk or something?"

She turned to look at him slowly. "What? No, I'm sober and alert."

"You don't seem very alert to me."

"I am." Paper, buns, separate, mayonnaise, cheese, patty, pickles, bun and wrap. "It won't happen again."

He took a step forward, she took a step back. "You always say it won't happen again but every ten minutes, I find you spacing out. We need people that are fast and aren't easily distracted."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry." Grab buns, separate, mayonnaise, cheese, patty, pickles, bun and wrap.

"Stephanie."

Stephanie looked up angrily, he was telling her not to get distracted but he was interrupting her work flow, he needed to step back. "Yes?"

"You smeared barbecue sauce on the cheese burger."

She looked down and he was right. She must've grabbed the wrong bottle. "Oh, I umm, I'm sorry."

His pale face looked paler as he stared at her with so much disdain, someone would think she splashed him on the face with boiling hot oil instead of mistaking the mayo bottle with the barbecue one.

"What is wrong with you?" he asked infuriated.

"Hey!" Stephanie replied angrily. "It's no big deal, I just confused the bottles." But as she said that, she reached for the mayonnaise bottle and pushed all the yellow tissue papers into the fryer simultaneously. The loud sizzling sound was the only thing heard in the whole building, people stopped eating and turned to the commotion in the kitchen. The stench of burned paper made a few people cough.

Stephanie froze as she felt her boss' eyes digging through her skull. She didn't want to look at his angry, sickly looking face. Before he could even utter the words, she excused herself quietly, took the headset off from her head and ran to her house. The fast food restaurant was in the neighboring town called Sahuaro, and she ran through that town like never before. That's going to be the last time she stepped foot there, she decided as she ran swiftly across the street towards the town of Tumacacori.

She didn't want to go back home. She walked around, she took her cap and threw it against into the desert surrounding the town, she no longer cared. She wasn't upset, she knew she didn't belong at a fast food restaurant. She loved the food, yes, but she was not happy making it, not even content. Making cakes was her thing. Creating masterpieces with flour and frosting. Making people happy with the taste of a sweet cake. She arrived at the park neighboring the elementary school, she remembered the park clearly, lovely jungle gym with a massive baseball field. She paused at the surrounding gate which was new, which she hated. It made it seem like a prison yard.

She walked through it so slowly. The school gated half the massive baseball field, which made no sense. They used to allow them to run from the school to the park during recess, but now that they gated the school excluding the jungle gym, she wondered what were kids doing to pass the time during recess. She sat on one swing and noticed how small it was from what she remembered.

It was a beautiful day and she took it all in. There were still three of the five places she had applied to, to hear from. Sure, it had been two weeks but she could still hope. The only reason she accepted the job at that fast food restaurant was so she could pay her student loans, which were now suffocating her. She took a deep breath and exhaled deeply. What was she going to do with her life? She found herself wondering. Everything had seemed so easy when she graduated from high school. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go, but it was all falling apart. What could she have done differently?

The sun started to set and she decided to go home. She detested the night so she practically ran back to her house, and allowed the endorphins from the run to better her mood, which wasn't much. She opened the door to the house and found her father sitting on the couch calmly reading a newspaper.

"Hi," Stephanie greeted him.

"How was work?" he asked without bothering to turn away from his newspaper.

"Great," she replied. "I just don't think I'll be working there for very long."

This got his attention. "And why do you think that?"

He watched her intently as if challenging her. "Well," she started trying to hide the fact that she was fired. "I don't belong in a fast food restaurant."

"Oh, so not only do you need a job but you will choose which job to get? What makes you so entitled?"

Stephanie took a step back at his response. "I have a degree."

"It isn't doing much for you, is it?"

She blinked. He was the one that encouraged her to go to college and pursue her dream of becoming a pastry chef. "There must be some bakery that wants me. I am good at what I do."

Her father scoffed. "When did you get so cocky?"

"It's not cockiness, it's confidence."

"At the state that you're in, you can't afford to be confident. You take what you are given and do the best you can."

Stephanie didn't know what to reply and it didn't seem like he needed a reply, he pulled the newspaper in front of his face and ignored her. Was he drunk? She couldn't tell. They barely had exchanged a few words since her return and that was how he spoke to her. Thanks a lot, father, she thought as she turned to her room.

The already bad day, became worst, and it made her exhausted. She climbed on to the top bunk, her sister nowhere to be found, she takes her usual cocoon position and shut her eyes. This was the only way she felt like she everything was going to be okay. Even if it was a huge lie.