The best retail story I’ve read

Okay, OP, I think I have a competitor. I work at KFC, so I see hambeasts like that ALL the time. Most of them are pretty well-behaved – I mean, you don’t fuck with your drug dealer, do you? And that’s what we are to these hordes of greasy stinking fat-asses.

Anyway, it’s time to close. I start rolling the shutters – mall store – get about halfway when this monstrosity lumbers up to the counter.

She shouts “Hey! Boy! Hey!”. I stop closing the gate to tell her we’re closed and can’t sell anything to her.
She says “No,” in a really flat voice, “no. Not closed.”
I pause for a second, say “Well, it’s five minutes past the time we usually close at, so I guess, yes, we are closed. Sorry.”

Then she said no again, and tried to slap the counter. This is the sad bit. She couldn’t reach the counter. Her arm was shorter than her gigantic larddumpster belly.

She was squished up against the counter, I could see her rolls pouring onto the table, greasing it up with her filthy slimy sweat. I’d have to clean that off. She finds she can’t reach the counter, flails her arm ineffectually, then says no again. I tell her our closing time isn’t negotiable and start pulling on the shutters again.

This is where shit got surreal. With what must have been a massive effort (driven by her fear she wasn’t going to be fed, no doubt) she hauled herself onto the counter. She managed to get one hand on the inside edge of the counter, with her feet sticking up in the air. God forbid you were sitting in the food court: this heaving bulk of lubber, this whale of a human being, had the forethought to wear a DRESS. Then again they don’t make pants in her size, I’ll bet.

With her other greasy hand she grasps my arm. Sounding like she’s dying of thirst, she rasps “Give me my FUCKING chicken, boy!”

At this point I am in shock. A walrus has just attacked me. I’m being held hostage by a warthog. Assaulted by a fucking huge cow.

“What … what do you want?” This isn’t even the standard KFC response; I just want to know what I have to give her so that I won’t be a headline tomorrow: KFC Employee Crushed to Death by Wild Hambeast. Still gripping my arm with her pudgy hand, she wheezes: “I want ten drumsticks.”

Ten drumsticks. I tell her we have no Original Recipe left; she can’t have ten drumsticks. She squeezes my arm, groaning, grunting: “Give me ten drumsticks!”

Now, I don’t know how many of you know how cooking chicken works: The raw chicken comes in bags. Each bag is 2 head, or two chicken’s worth of pieces. One chicken is nine pieces: two drumsticks, two wings, two thighs, two ribs, and a breast piece.

A little math will tell you we’d need to cook 5 head to satisfy this beast’s desire. Which means three bags, so actually 6 head. It takes about four minutes breading 6 head at top speed, and then 16 minutes of frying to cook it. So, roughly 20 minutes. And our cook still has to clean the floors, the polishing pump, the racking off table, the breading table, change the flour, everything. Not to mention, we’ll waste 44 pieces of chicken. That is a fucking massive amount of waste for a store that will only sell maybe 260 pieces in a whole day. It’s not as bad as all that; we have blue-bags which are 8 thigh 8 drumstick, but that’s still 24 wasted pieces and cooking well past close.

It’s fifteen minutes past close, a gigantic fat woman has launched herself over the counter and is holding my stomach contents hostage, it will take another 20 minutes at least to satisfy her, and I’ve had it.

So I went and told my manager I’d been attacked by a whale. He came out, took one blank look at the situation, and said, quietly, “What the fuck.” She shouted to him – still spread out over the counter, fat pooling around her head – “You have to cook me my chicken. I’ll wait.” She looked like she was ready to wait on top of the counter for it, too. He called mall security and we just stood there, looking at her. She stayed quiet, giving us the patented Hambeast Glare of Death, until two big security guys hauled her off. My manager went with them, to file a complaint with the centre, to get her banned for life.

He came back with a bottle of Jack Daniels, called his Area Manager, resigned on the spot, and sat down in the office. He and I and the cook drank out of a paper soft-drink cups. He left us clocked on for two weeks straight, until the very moment he was no longer required to work out his contract with KFC. His last act as a manager was to sign off on 320-something hours of overtime for me, and similar for the cook. I don’t think he said a single word in those two weeks, just silently plowed through everything that needed doing and gave anyone who tried to talk to him a blank stare.

My paycheck from those two weeks is one of my most treasured possessions. It says:

MONDAY – S Hours: 42.99 Scale: 1.00 Rate: 15.40 Value: 662.05
MONDAY – S Hours: 293.01 Scale: 1.50 Rate: 23.10 Value: 6778.53

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