welcome to droppyland

"can you work today?" (the a-team)

Date: 3/19/23; 1:30AM

whenever i think about the future i experience a dread of whats to come and whats coming to an end. i like where i am right now and i dont want that to go away. so now that something important to me has come to an end, its almost hard to comprehend. i make this sound as if someone died or something but no, someone quit their minimum wage job at taco bell. i have no idea where i will be going with this so bear with me. during the summer of 2022 i was 50/50 on whether i wanted to get a job or not. there was the benefit of having all the money that i would want, but with the cost of my free time. this time could be spent with friends or just doing things i enjoyed. i automatically assumed work would be boring and i wouldnt want to do it.

after getting rejected by target for the second time (i know im a fucking loser i get it) i got an opportunity from a close friend of mine (ryan) at first i was unsure if i wanted to take the job for the reason state above, but i bit the bullet and accepted. the deal was that we would carpool to work because for some reason this taco bell was 30 minutes away(???) and we would share the same shift. this would save on gas and also help me as i didnt have a liscense.

because of this arrangement and the people working there, i believe these past months were some of my best so far. yes i had less free time at home but i had a lot going for me each day. i was getting paid, hanging out with people that i thought were cool asf and just fucking around. i think it was my 3rd day working, and it was the first time i met a guy named vance. vance was a fucking goat, but he kinda sucked at his job. after talking to vance for 30 minutes we were essentially best friends known eachother for years and i would be the god father to his kids (i perhaps exaggerated this but yaknow). vance was an interesting character, he was messy, loud, and made up the wildest stories, but he had a charm to him. a shit ton of people who went through our drive thru recognized him n shit, and when i would work window they would ask for him all the time. vance fucked around a lot so we decided to lock ryan out of the establishment and run him in circles. all while the shift lead (rhylin) would watch and not help him whatsoever. vance would go on to be fired for abandoning taco bell while on pay, what a sad day.

i guess i should establish what the term 'a-team' actually means. me, ryan, and the shift lead rhylin would all work night shift together a lot due to shortages of night workers. we all joked around and at some point the term 'a-team' was brought up, so we would refer to ourselves as that for fun. it essentially consisted of me working the window, ryan and rhylin working the line, and maybe a forth person doing something else. dawg the a-team would do anything and it was the best. once again since there were shortages we even closed ILLEGALLY (we were minors at the time and our work permits did not permit us to work past 10 and our store closed at 12:30) those were some fun ass nights. there was one night where after we closed, me and ryan left and went to a random ass (giant) parking lot and he let me drive around. now i know it was a heavy ass SUV but the acura mdx (2008) has some fucking power to it, and i remember just ripping that shit down the parking lot at 50-60 mph. back to the bell though.

fucking around in general was just a blast. another example would be the 'thermal man' arc. on the line that makes food we have a hot and cold line, hot is constantly heated and cold is cooled, we have metal pans so the temperature spreads a shit ton making the pans hot, so when we swapped pans for hot line, we would use napkins so we didnt touch the hot ass metal pans. i thought it would be funny to grab the pans with my bare hands and steal that shit. this is where the idea of thermal man was created. that shit hurt like hell but it was fun to watch peoples reactions, idk it brightened up an otherwise slow and uneventful night. and that was the best part of working at this specific taco bell in that specific city, everyone just interacted in cool ways, it allowed for dunb shit like me being "thermal man" to happen. no one took their job seriously (except for a certain someone who i will not be explaining any further) it was all fun and games, of course within reason.

but now what do i have? im stuck here as ryan has quit, rhylin is going to quit, and everyone i know is telling me to quit. i hate to get all negative on this look back on fond memories but the reality is, the store is going to shit now. we have new hires who annoy the shit out of me and cant do anything for their lives, all the cool people are gone or are leaving, and im getting more and more hours. it sounds cringe but the a-team literally hard carried the storea and im sad thats its no longer a thing. the past few times i went to work i had the realization that i will never have another a-team, and although i couldnt comprehend the meaning behing it, i was sad. i still cant comprehend that the three of us will never work together again, but i miss it a lot. ill sit at the drive-thru position and look over at the food line, ryan and rhylin aren't there, its the two dumbfucks who act 15 years younger than they actually are.

i used to actually look forward to going to work, call me a capitalist wage slave or whatever, but it was fun. now i dread it with all my being. its saturday night (sunday technically) and im dreading tuesday knowing i have to work 4 hours. only 4 hours and im stressed about it. typically with these types of things, i hold on in the hopes that it goes back to the way it was, but in this case i have no hope. i have even lost the ability to be thermal man, like i genuinely cannot handle holding the hot pans anymore lmao.

working here has made some of my favorite memories, and has allowed me to meet some of my favorite people. it made me realize that, yeah work is supposed to be serious, and it can be a pain the ass, but with a little luck you can make it fun. and that luck has started to dwindle clearly. no matter how hard i try i wont get to lock my friend outside of the store for fun, or be peak thermal man, i wont look forward to working here anymore, but atleast i have the memories.

working,

droppy.