Deep Shake

"Deep Shake"

I had only been working the cashier at McDonalds for a week, the mornings were a rush of activity to heat the grill, fetch the frozen abominations and get them ready for whatever little monsters crawled through the door at 7:30 AM and grumble their orders to us.
I was the first face they saw.
My manager said I looked like Heath Ledger.
"The joker that offed himself?" I asked in a semi serious tone.
"No," She replied with a laugh, throwing back her brown hair with air of superiority, "What his corpse looks like right now."
There were a few laughs in the back, but I ignored it.
"You look like a corpse."
I mostly ignored it.
"What was that?" She asked, cearly hearing what I had said.
"I said that I need to buy more corks. It's a thing. Like your face." I replied as kindly as I could.
The first customer came in, a Karen.
In fact, it was Karen McGleebit. A regular with short term memory and a religious zealots mindset.
"I'll have my usual." She directed with an air of "I'm better than you."
She was not. Karen was homeless, penniless, and sold herself for 25 cents to keep up her gumball machine addiction.
Also, we had only heard of her through rumors from the other locations. She had never been to this location.
What was her usual?
A swift kick in the ass and a truck stop?
I could only stare at what amounted to the first version of a minnie mouse costume from disneyland. An eldritch horror with souless eyes, an ADHD kids heaven of crows feet, ravens knees, turkey elbows, eagles face, and poodles ass hair done up in a bun with such a beautiful level of meth addict detail I could barely keep from calling the CDC and claiming her presence as the emergence of the most drug addicted zombie outbreak ever.
"And what number would that be?" I asked in a charming voice.
I could only stare at what amounted to the first version of a minnie mouse costume from disneyland.
An eldritch horror with souless eyes, an ADHD kids heaven of crows feet, ravens knees, turkey elbows, eagles face, and poodles ass hair done up in a bun with such a beautiful level of meth addict detail I could barely keep from calling the CDC and claiming her presence as the emergence of the most drug addicted zombie outbreak ever.
"And what number would that be?" I asked in a charming voice.
"I want my usual! I come here every day asking for my usual! What's s hard about that?" Karen replied in a chillingly calm way, I guess after getting ridden dry as the desert for hours on end and sucking up Bubblegum Joe comics from the machines outside the junkyard, this was probably fine dining to her.
"Ma'am," I began.
That was a mistake, calling a Karen a ma'am is akin to getting one's period in a pool of teenage pirahnas. I saw in slow motion as she pulled out her phone.
"I'm going to get you fired! Being disrespectful to a woman, how dare you! Your manager is going to hear about this, I swear I'm going to have this place shut down! You can't treat me like this!" She screeched like a chicken that had just been beat with a shock rod on full.
I looked in the back to my Manager, and she simply gave me the go ahead, as if she were testing my emergency response.
Yep, period in a pirahna pool, heavy flow.
She glared at me, phone in full recording mode, daring me to say anyting that she could fail to use in a court of law, seeing as how she hadn't any money to begin with.
As a freshly turned 21 year old man, I had only two ways to respond, with humor, or with fists. Since I couldn't hit crackhead humpty dumpty, and I had seen my fair share of Karen videos on tiktok, I decided to play it cool.
"Well!?" She cawed out like she were trying to crap out an ostrich egg.
"Well," I spoke, turning up the charm, my voice low and gutteral, seductive. "I suppose you'll have to punish me, won't you?"
"What!?" She screamed, her face blushing, and before she could continue, I grabbed the announcer mic by the registar and brought it to my lips, my eyes in deep contact with the back of her retinas.
I wanted her to feel this.
I growled slowly, "Dada da-" I inhaled a lung full of air before unleashing it, the sound of the deep animalistic growl echoing.
"Dadaaaaaa..." I jumped over the counter, mic still in hand, the cord tight like a violin string, I inhaled again, never once breaking eye contact, Karen McGleebit was furious, she was stunned, her pupils were dialated like a stoned hippo, and mouth agape like a sloths arms dangling.
"I- I- I-" She stammered, I could hear the crew in the background trying to stifle their laughter, a few had begun recording.
My manager's eyes were like daggers, stabbing at me employment.
I had her perfectly.
I let go of the mic, wrapped my arms around the crackhead smurf and leaned in close, trying not to vomit and ruin the perfect set up.
I growled, yet again, deeper, more ferociously, as if I were in command of her and in her world, I was te only person in it.
Clearly I was, but not in the way I had imagined.
"I'm.... Loving it-" With out another word I lifted her up like Luke Skywalker should've done to Yoda and carried her outside and sert her down, "Also, you are permenently banned. Byeee!"
I walked in, triumphantly holding the doors closed till she got bored of trying to raise the dead through incoherently meth screeches. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and it turned me around.
My manager, Kathy, stared in right in the eyes.
"You're going to fire me?" I straight up guessed, my bravado shrinking away in the face of certain joblessness.
"You're getting a promotion." She said, suddenly bursting out laughing after a few stern seconds of silent contemplation.
"Damn it. Fine then."
From then on, everyone at McDonalds Location 155 called me Ronald McDonald, cause I had full permission to verbally slap the crazies away.
I even got a raise from 9.25 to 9.26 an hour.