Letter from a McDonald's Cashier

I hate these people. Their eyes are milky, their fingers pudgy, and their children are numerous and loud. Sometimes when I take their order they stare at me in disdain, like they can't imagine they just spoke to someone of my lowly stature. Times like that I want to get down on my knees and laugh to the sky, forever and ever, at the irony of it all. They ask me for flesh and sugar by the pound and think that they're the ones with the better lives.

It's the worst when it feels like they're right. They eat shit but I'm the one who has to sell it just to make a living. This place will hire anyone, and does, and then expects us to automatically care about what we're doing. They would replace us all with machines if they could. Imagine that: a big machine cranking out poisons and smoke. Put your money in the slot and stick your mouth on the exhaust pipe. Super size it.

Everybody eats this shit, man. Especially the people that work here. I can't believe that. I've seen it hundreds of times and I stll can't accept it when I see one of the workers on the other side of the counter. This culture eats itself. The cows digest the cows and become furious when there's nothing left.

I do numbers to keep my head busy while I work. I keep track of how much of this and how much of that we sell each day, each hour, and I average it out and I add it up. Then I do it all over again just to make sure I'm right. I make up elaborate plans on how to steal this money from the safe in the office. So far I haven't gotten past the issue of what I would do once I had the money. I'd have to still work here. Quitting right afterward would be an admission of guilt.

I'm not a bad person. I'm just trying to take advantage of a corrupt system. I am not justly compensated for having to put up with the masses of idiots that line up here every day. If these people are going to give me money and ask me to help them kill themselves, then I should be paid enough to find a better life for myself. I'm not going to be one of those people on the other side of the counter.

There is a big world out there. And it's apparently filled with people like you. I can rise above that. I know I can. I have the determination and the brains. I just need to get out of this system, around it, above it. And the only way I'm going to do that is by ignoring the rules of that system. I gotta build my own system. One that works for me.