Track 3 – Superpowers Enable Me to Blend in With Machinery - Dillinger Four

Jake’s boss at Fargo’s Subs was not Mr. Fargo. There was no Mr. Fargo. There was a guy named Albert Meyer who moved here from California with someone else’s idea. Albert Meyer’s decision to open his business in Barker, Texas, revolved entirely around the fact that it has a large, state-run university. He explained it to Jake once.

“This town is great for four reasons. First, college kids have no clue that you treat them like shit and don’t pay them shit. Second, they aren’t Mexicans. Third, there’s always somebody just like you who will do your job if you complain. Fourth and most importantly, the kids in this town are God damn fanatics about tradition, so all you have to do is convince them that it promotes Ranger Spirit to eat here and they march in like the fucking sheep that they are.”

He called it the God Bless America Business Model.

So that’s what he did, and now every Saturday after the football game there would be a line out the door for overpriced, crappy sandwiches that nobody, deep down, liked.

It was a standalone building nestled between a Kinko’s and a bookstore. The only books the bookstore sold were textbooks—Kinko’s handled all your business needs. The whole area near the school was soulless and deliberate and empty.

Being right across the street from campus meant that there wasn’t any parking in front. In the back was a small gravel parking lot, but it was for employees only, so Meyer would never get around to putting in the concrete he kept bringing up so he would have something to say to the people that didn’t matter to him.

“I guess it’s about time to pave that back lot, huh?”

Jake’s car was faded blue, ugly, and a little older than our pathetic little hero, who is a few years from being one-third dead according to national averages. It should be mentioned that neither the car nor the man is going to do anything heroic.

The car was the embodiment of a piece of shit—an eighty-two Ford Fairmont station wagon. The last row of seats was ripped out. It was covered in key marks and rust spots and it started billowing blue smoke at about fifty. I saw it headed the other direction this morning while I was on my way to a job I don’t want, and it was a blight moving through the city’s thick veins.

Jake got to work fifteen minutes late, but he was still the first person there besides the kitchen crew, and as he pulled up the two of them were standing on the back stoop passing a joint back and forth. Albert Meyer had no idea how many different ways his employees dealt with being treated like shit. Just order the California Club without the fresh made guacamole.

Jake opened his car door and stepped out onto the gravel. It crunched under his feet like nails on a blackboard or a fork scraping a plate, but every sound is like that with a hangover, every sound is an overused idiom. He cringed at each step and tried to remember the name of the new kid standing on the stoop while I tried to think of a better simile for the sound of gravel underfoot.

Jake was everyone’s favorite manager at work, and a lot of employees considered him a friend. He did not know this. None of them called. He didn’t call them. It was this thing they had.

Jake smiled weakly as he approached the two kids on the stoop. The new kid, the one with the uneven sideburns and the permanently glossed eyes, the kind of kid who would be a great employee for three or four months and then miss a week of work for no reason and get fired, held out the joint for him, but he just shook his head as he walked by. Drugs made his head hurt lately, and his head hurt enough already. He was only ever talked into a joint or a pill when he was already drunk, which didn’t happen often when he drank alone in his apartment every night.

He walked into the kitchen to see what was known in the restaurant industry as a big fucking mess. There was a stack of lettuce heads on the back table, midway through being chopped. Two of them had rolled onto the black mats on the floor that never really got clean no matter how long they were sprayed with the hose, and Jake made a note to not get lettuce when he made his sandwich today. There was a tub of raw steak sitting out next to them, and a pot of soup was boiling over. He sighed and went through the swinging black doors out into the restaurant.

Jake knew the health code back and forth. He had very little to do while he hid out in the restaurant’s tiny office, and there was only so much in there to read. He knew you couldn’t fart behind a food line. He knew all about day dots. He knew where the meat should go and why you can’t keep a cup in the big tub of salt for scooping. He knew that the hand sinks never got hot enough, and he knew that the walk-in refrigerator never got cold enough. He knew that the meat was in the danger zone most of the day. He could fill out the paperwork to shut this place down all by himself. But he didn’t.

The lobby of the restaurant was fairly large. This Fargo’s was the third location in town and the flagship store. It was also two blocks away from the corporate office, which assured that Jake always had somebody up his ass. But the corporate office didn’t open until ten, so he had at least two hours’ peace. Jake took a breath and almost gagged. Every day he said to himself he had to stop coming to work hung over, but he still drank himself down to nothing every night, like a child who loves to crank the pencil sharpener. His nose was too sensitive when he was hung over.

Every restaurant has a smell that the employees all hate. It stays with them and gets in their clothes, their hair, their skin. They can’t escape it in their homes, on dates—it’s always there. Customers are somehow immune to this. Fargo’s was the smell of salami, bacon grease, bleach.

The décor in the restaurant was extremely focus-grouped-eclectic-chic. Red brick walls, sky painted on the ceiling, concrete floors, brushed steel tables and chairs. In an attempt to be quirky, the walls had framed photographs of the walls on them. Painted in big black letters behind the line was the restaurant’s slogan: Fargo’s – Put it in your face!

The whole thing would have been embarrassing if everyone didn’t love it so much. The fraternity boys would come in wearing their fraternity shirts that stole somebody else’s intellectual property and it all just seemed to fit. It made Jake sick.

He went into the office to escape all the customers who weren’t even there yet. His sanctuary was a six-by-four closet with a computer, a safe, and a bunch of bare-wood shelves. It all felt unfinished, and a little bit like home. There were papers scattered everywhere, and Jake pushed them off the folding chair so he had a place to sit. Chris, the GM, would deal with it tonight, and then he would write a note in the manager’s logbook about keeping things neat. They never spoke.
Jake opened up the safe and started pulling out the cash drawers, making sure they were all balanced. They weren’t. Whoever had closed last night had lost ten dollars inside a two-by-two steel box. At Fargo’s this was a huge fucking deal. Jake started counting the safe when the phone rang.

“Fargo’s,” Jake answered.

“Hey, who is this?” A shaky voice on the other end.

“It’s Jake.” He said this while counting out twenties. His hangover didn’t help. Twenty-five makes five-hundred. Count it twice.

The person on the other end hesitated, not sure what to say. Jake didn’t ask for anything—he was trying to concentrate.

“Hey, Jake, it’s Wayne. Listen, umm…”

Jake just kept counting twenties. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.

“I’m not coming in today. I’m still having problems with… you know.”

Jake knew perfectly well. He lost count at twenty-two or maybe it was twenty-three and swore under his breath.

Wayne thought it was directed at him, and his voice became a desperate, nasal plea. “Jake, I’m sorry, but you know what’s going on, and I just don’t think I can do it today.”

Since Jake worked the day shift Monday through Friday, he was the only manager Wayne or any of the full-timers ever dealt with. Most of Jake’s crew was his crew alone, and that was the way they liked it. They saw him as a pushover. It wasn’t that—really he just didn’t care about training goals or labor goals or any goals whatsoever. He also really didn’t give a shit if people came to work or not, unless he felt the consequences.

“I already told Travis to expect my call,” Jake said. “He wants the hours anyway.”
He said it without sympathy, frustration, compassion, or feeling. He just stated a fact and hung up the phone. He regretted, just a little, not saying anything else. No I’m sorry your life sucks. No don’t worry about it. No nothing. But it faded away and he started counting his twenties again.

When he was at sixteen or seventeen, there was a knock at the door, and Jake looked over his shoulder through the one-way mirror to see a silhouette with pigtails. He lost count again.

The gravel crunching underfoot from before was like the sound of a carriage return on a typewriter combined with a fat man’s legs rubbing together all sweaty run through a meat grinder. At once irritating and repulsive. That’s kind of a stretch for a better simile, but it hasn’t been dried out from overuse.

Jake got up and opened the door enough to stick his head out. Outside was a short, blond ball of energy in a brand new thrift store t-shirt from the mall. She was an amalgam of several people I used to know. They’ll recognize it and it will be awkward from now on between us. I’ll be telling all my friends’ secrets.
“What, Kimmy?”

Kimmy looked up at Jake with her huge, round eyes like one of those rainforest animals that are too dumb to not become extinct. I feel like I stole that sentence from somewhere. It looked like nothing was going on back there behind those eyes, but she was smiling like she had something to say that was of the utmost importance to her.

“I got a new car!” She was beaming. Jake hated happiness in the morning. He shut the door.

“Hey,” Kimmy shouted through the glass, and of course she was still smiling. “That’s not nice!”
. . .
Last night, while I was up too late with this story, I chopped off the whole first track, the Lawrence Arms song. I should probably try and fit it in somewhere, because with it went all of my description of Jake, and now we’re three tracks in and he’s doing things and spinning out of my control and you don’t even know him yet. You’ve just seen him at work.

Jake's skin hangs off of him in the strangest places from five years of not eating enough. He has a beard (even though it's October in Texas, which is still summer) because he's lazy and because he doesn't want to see his father in the mirror. He wears a pair of unwashed green cargo shorts and a black band t-shirt every day. Every night he drinks, and then he drinks. Every night he watches television until it goes to snow or until the thirty second commercials become thirty minute commercials. He doesn't look people in the eye. Sometimes he forgets he's chewing food. He has headphones and an mp3 player for when he goes to the store, and he pretends to not hear the cashier as much as possible. He walks with the slouched and inward walk of the uninvited. Right now he is an automaton at work, but he is an automaton everywhere. A self-hatred engine rigged through faulty wiring to timid guilt.

If Jake ever talked to Chris, the GM, he would say that he had a laissez-faire style of management, which just means he doesn’t give a fuck. He would stand by the register for most of the shift with a clipboard and a pen. So customers wouldn’t talk to him, he held the clipboard up and pretended to be writing things about the crew or reading paperwork. Really he was just writing down what was wrong with the people that came through line.

Incredibly disproportionate ass. Identical twins are frightening. Ordering while on his cell phone. Unibrow. Comes in too often. Sorority girl orders kids meal. Asshole stole soda. Demanded only red bell peppers in the bell pepper medley. Looking at me like I should be working. Has a complaint. Is a bitch. Keep crying kid, life just gets worse.

This would go on until either the shift ended or Meyer showed up. The crew was totally autonomous. If things didn’t go smoothly Jake looked bad, and if Jake looked bad the office might cut back his hours, and if the office cut back his hours the crew would have to work with someone who yelled at them when they did whip-its in the walk-in or told a customer to go to hell.

Every once in awhile a customer would complain and Jake’s legs would go all to jelly. He would fall all over himself to give them free stuff just to avoid the conflict. This was all he really worried about: the possibility of having to speak to someone he didn’t know about something he didn’t care about.

When all was said and done, the only responsibility he took at work was to initial things. The team leader was in charge of the crew, the kitchen manager was in charge of the food quality, the designated cleaner was in charge of store appearance. This infuriated the team leader to no end, but Jake didn’t notice. He was too busy initialing things and trying his best to stay invisible. The only proof of good management is your initials.

If I wanted to make Jake seem like a noble person, I would say that his lack of inertia was an act of defiance against a system that was grinding him between the gears. That apathy and revolution look the same from the outside, sometimes. But instead I will say that he was turning in place within the gears and had become one himself, invisible and compliant. I’ve taken it upon myself to knock him loose.

The team leader wanted to know how the hell Jake got promoted. The team leader didn’t know the power of keeping your mouth shut and your head low. Jake did this by nature, and so when everyone else looked like an asshole he was distanced from them. Also, he used to take a shower every day.

Jake looked up from his clipboard to see Meyer’s car in the parking lot. Meyer was inside it, watching the crew. There was no way to know how long he had been there. Jake hated this spy novel bullshit Meyer loved to pull, sitting there as if he were waiting on Dillinger to leave the theater. The truth was Meyer was bored at the office and was by nature a petty, vicious man who loved to catch people in things. Jake was in deep shit if he had been there very long, but at least he hadn’t been on the internet in the office this time.

Jake waved at Meyer to let him know it was over. Meyer smiled and opened the car door. His massive girth rocked the vehicle as he struggled to get out. Meyer was almost six foot four and easily over three hundred pounds. The daily free sandwiches that were deceptively fattening had taken their toll on the man. He was composed entirely of bullshit, but that didn’t stop him from being intimidating, because he’s every boss I’ve ever known. He was steamed about something—his face started getting redder than usual as he walked toward the restaurant.

“Jake!” he shouted jovially from the front door. “How are you!”

Let me tell you something: until you were management, Meyer was the coolest boss you ever had, even though he always looked at your name tag before talking to you, even if you’d seen him twice a week for five years. He was the good guy, he came in and took care of everybody’s problems. It was the managers of his restaurants that didn’t understand, not him. But once you got promoted he learned your name and hated your fucking guts.

He slapped his hand onto Jake’s shoulder. “Hey buddy, can I talk to you in the office for a minute?”

“S-Sure,” Jake said, preparing himself. He tried to unlock the office with his key, but his hand was shaking and he couldn’t get it until he put his fingers right up against the lock to guide it. Meyer probably noticed. Jake went in first and Meyer followed.

Meyer took up most of the space in the office, so Jake was forced to sit in the folding chair. He felt like he was being crowded out by a pink boulder stuffed into khakis and a short-sleeve dress shirt.

“Where’s Wayne?” Meyer spat out.

Jake knew Wayne’s girlfriend had just had an abortion without telling him, and he had come home to her crying and he didn’t believe in abortion but he did believe in fucking, and now Wayne had problems, but Jake didn’t want to hear Meyer go on about how immoral and stupid his employees were. He was just happy this wasn’t about him, and he wanted this to end as quickly as possible.

“He’s got strep throat. He brought me a doctor’s note yesterday.” It wasn’t a bold or noble lie—it was shaking and weak. “But he gets paid a dollar more than Travis, who’s covering for him, so our labor should be great for today.”

The whole time Jake was talking Meyer kept getting redder and bigger. Now he was about to pop.

“That’s bullshit,” he said, “and you know it. I don’t even know why the fuck you haven’t fired him yet except you’re an idiot. Well, I’ll take care of it. Put up the help wanted sign, and Chris better not fucking dare pay his replacement the same amount. I can replace every one of these fucks for minimum wage if I wanted to.”

All of this was said as a series of grunts from some base animal. Jake was shrinking into his chair as spittle flew from Meyer’s lips to Jake’s forehead. He wanted to disappear forever.

“Christ, you’d think we were running a daycare or some shit! Next thing I know you’ll be wiping their asses for them! This is a fucking business!”

Meyer was winded and his face was bright red. Did I say yet that he got red? He glared down at Jake for a second, saw the frightened look in his eyes, had no pity.

“Did you get all that?” Meyer said spitefully between breaths.

“yes.” Jake looked down at his shoes. This happens all the time.

“Good,” Meyer said, and then turned to leave. He had to put his huge ass in Jake’s face to get the door open, one last indignity to suffer through.

Jake stayed in the office, shaking. He wanted to scream, cry, and go to bed all at the same time. His hangover came roaring back. He was a puppy in a thunderstorm. He stayed that way for a few minutes thinking that maybe dying is easier than living after all.

He could do it in the lobby. He would go get the twelve inch kitchen knife, walk out there, and slice his belly open, letting his everything spill out. His blood would run across the polished concrete floor and people would back away from it like it was hot lava. He would collapse in a heap in the middle of it, like some noble samurai who suffered for his master but failed. And everyone would remember him—he would be visible, alive, for a few seconds.

Finally, he took a deep breath and went back out into the whirlwind of bullshit. Meyer had cut to the front of the line and was ordering lunch. This did not make good business sense, just like firing Wayne did not make good business sense. It was going to happen anyway. Jake wished to God that Meyer would order the California Club with extra guacamole and maybe it would give him AIDS or hepatitis. But he didn’t.

So that’s how the Help Wanted sign went up.