The Daydreamer in the Hole: A semi-autobiographical psuedo-fairytale

This is what happens when I get bored at work. I realize I talk a lot about work... I promise my next post will have nothing to do with fast-food.

Once upon a time, there lived a girl. She wasn't a particularly beautiful or rich girl, but she was a very nice girl. This girl was so nice, in fact, that with only a smile and a sincere "have a nice day," she could dramatically improve the life of a perfect stranger. Now as this girl was not from a rich family, she had to work. And work she did. The girl worked at a restaurant, that, while popular and cheap, sold mostly disgusting meat sandwiches (with poor quality, burnt beef) and potatoes chopped up into wedges. Despite the fact that the quality of the food was so poor, the restaurant was extremely popular. One of the restaurant's innovations was that customers did not even have to go inside to get their food: they would order and pay at one window and then receive their food at the next. This was called the "ride-through" and although one unfortunate worker had to clean up after the horses, it was an incredibly lucrative invention. The girl worked at the second window. Everyday, the girl would smile, hand the customer their order, and say "have a wonderful day." The customer would ignore her, the horse would whinny, and they'd ride off to someplace more exciting. This process would repeat for eight hours, until the girl's shift was over. The girl of course, had no idea where the customers went after they left her window; to her they seemed like the same twenty or so people, going by her window on a continuing loop. She liked to imagine that they went somewhere exciting. She was a very nice girl, but she suffered from an ailment that derived from having read far too many fairy tales in her childhood: the girl was a compulsive daydreamer. Many times at work she would become bored with the monotony and dream that she were somewhere, anywhere else. And even though customers loved her bright smile and kind words, her wandering mind meant that she was not very good at her job.

The girl knew this. And that is why she had a hard time understanding why she was continually put at the second window, or as the workers called it "the hole." Why would she be put in a position where she was bound to screw up? She didn't understand that at all. (Of course, to be fair, she had a hard time understanding a lot of things, since, like almost all extremely nice people, the girl was an idiot. A very nice idiot, to be sure, but an idiot nonetheless.) So the girl continued to do her job, and she continued to screw it up by not paying attention. As time went on, however, the girl began to see things that she hadn't before: her daydreams were starting to meld with real life. Soon, middle-aged men with missing teeth and bad comb overs and horrible breath weren't flirting with her, but trolls were. Her manager that insisted she work in the hole was more than her boss, she was an evil witch with all the charm of a poisonous snake. Customers weren't people to be helped, they were only gluttonous mouths that led into always-empty stomachs. The girl was entertained by this merging of her two worlds. And as she danced with insanity, she realized that her dreams had saved her. She hated her job, and her dreams prevented her from showing that. And they taught her that her job was temporary.Someday she would leave this place. She was not a damsel in distress trapped in some tower. She was a girl at a window, with a smile and a soul. That would have to be enough for now.