Every inch of the fast food conglomerate's was socially engineered to increase appetite and diminish stress. Somewhere on the hundredth floor of a hundred and twenty story skyscraper in an unknown large city, a man in an executive suit was testing the idea that if they moved the straw dispenser closer to the iced tea dispenser, it would increase profit. If the lab rats drank more iced tea, the order would be sent out and hundreds of stores across the continental United States would commit the change.
He wanted to put a gun to his head and paint the dining room red. He despised every square inch of the place. His janitorial work would soon enough be replaced with machines that would greet customers, dispense ketchup, and mop up after the half dozen drunk, horny college students dumped their three-quarter full large Coke on the ground in half the time. All of this, without the managers needing to remind the employee to put on their stuff-eating grin and wish the defiant customer a good day.
"This is fast food, not slow food!," the manager barked at the burger "chefs," whom were likely underperforming.
That man was always full of useful information. He often wondered if there was a pamphlet delivered to the store with these witty zingers, which would have been printed on floor forty-nine of the hundred and twenty floor skyscraper, or if he just spent every waking hour of his life coming up with new motivational catch-phrases. With the sort of dedication required to become manager in the first place, the latter did not seem all that far off.
"Nihilism," he said, "is reality."
His co-worker was the epitome of a "surfer." There would not be any less doubt if he carried around a surfboard every waking hour. From the incoherent and slow manner of speech, punctuated properly with the word "dude" every few seconds, to the constant renewal of tan lines and sunburns, to the tattoos of waves and Japanese tribal arm bands, there could be no mistaking it.
"Yeah, totally." Chad remarked.
"If you zoom out of our daily workings," he continued, "nothing becomes important. If you take me, and expand a little, I become insigifncant to the greater good of my family. If you take my family and zoom out to the entire state of Florida, all of them become unimportant. If you take Florida and zoom out to United States, the entire state falls to the wayside. United States compared to planet Earth? Earth to the Solar System? Even our entire galaxy is but a speck among billions of galaxies in an ever-expanding abyss."
He sipped his Diet Coke, content with his diatribe.
"Totally, dude!" Chad pointed a clumsy finger at him. "But, like, what about love?"
"What?" He furrowed his brows in anger. How could anyone be so single-minded. He had just dissolved the meaning of the entire galaxy to the equivilant of a drop of water in the Atlantic ocean, and all that mattered was love.
"Think about it, dude. love."
"What's to think about?" He was visibly upset. "How can you even worry about the importance of love when your entire life is meaningless!"
"Life ain't meaningless, dude!" Such optimism. It was admirable. "You gotta have love before you die, otherwise you ain't even really alive."
Well, maybe not.
He sighed, and leaned back in the booth, setting his Diet Coke on the tray. "Chad, I do not believe that love will solve any issues in life."
"You totally got it wrong, dude." Chad retorted. After looking over his shoulder suspiciously, he leaned in closer over the table. "Don't say anything to anyone about this, but I think Marissa likes you."
"The redhead?," He replied warily.
Chad nodded. "Maybe you should to hit it off with her, eh?" He leaned back into his seat cooly.
He had not avoided women because he was bad with them. No, he avoided them because he did not see the point. It's unlikely to be successful. Look at how many songs are produced about heartbreaks, all the accounts of Self Delete from loved lost. What are the chances that this co-worker will be the one to make him happy? Is it worth the money, the effort, and the emotions?
Well, he thought, as they say: don't knock it until you try it, dude.
Two dates later, they were getting along. They didn't actually share any interests, but insulting their manager's catch-phrases provided to be enough entertainment in itself to keep conversations from going cold. Work was all they had in common, and it was more than enough to get him to this point. Chad had reminded him several times over the course of the last two weeks: "On the third date, rent movies. Don't go to a threatre, dude, rent 'em for your DVD player." The intentions for this were obvious, to get the two of them alone together on a comfortable surface doing something in the dark.
So, as the third date approached, he rented movies. She came over to his house. They watched movies. At one particularly intense moment, she huddled over next to him. At another particularly romantic moment, he was on top of her. Chad had gotten his way. He was an intellectually inferior version of the man on the hundreth floor of the hundred and twenty story skyscraper.
When they had finished, he sat up awkwardly in his seat, and she put on her clothes. They finished the movie together and she kissed him good-night. He watched through the window as her beat-up SUV rolled out of the driveway and around the corner. He then went to bed.
The following morning, Marissa was put in the kitchen and Chad and him were on clean-up. At one point, the two of them struck up a conversation while cleaning in the same area.
"So, dude," Chad started slowly, "did it work?"
"Yes." He said flatly. "The movies worked."
Chad laughed obnoxiously, "see, dude? Life ain't so bad when you try new things." Chad paused awkwardly, looking around him somewhat. "But, bro, I gotta ask: is she a natural redhead?"
"She's actually blonde."
"Bummer, dude!"
Over the commotion of the friers' timers going off, the conversations of customers, and the sound of late 90's smash hits (dubbed family friendly by floor eighty-six of the hundred and twenty story skyscraper), the manager hollared "the lobby's getting destroyed! What's the hold up?"
He wanted to put a gun to his head and paint the dining room red.
