terminally_underwhelmed

I make [REDACTED]-brand pizzas at one of the campus food places. My manager thinks I'm unusually good at my job, and has had me train two people even though I've only worked here for a semester. Here's How to Make REDACTED Pizzas in the REDACTED kitchen at the University of REDACTED.

Sometimes people pre-make pizzas and leave them in the Chrome Refrigerator, which you need to kick shut or it won't stay closed. That's also where the raw dough is stored. So the first thing you do every shift is open the Chrome Refrigerator and see if you've got pre-mades and proofed dough. If there's no dough, you're screwed.
The pizza-making is easy once you learn to read the topping chart. Yellow is a half-serving amount, orange is a full-serving. Just-pepperoni pizzas get the pepperoni on top of the cheese. Mini pizzas get cut into four, big pizzas get cut into ten or into squares. Cutting a pizza into ten equal slices is a cognitive challenge you will come to relish.
Eventually you memorize the pizza recipes and can identify pizza out of the oven just by looking at it. You hate this. Your college brain is precious real estate, and now it is full of Capitalist Squatters instead of Good Middle-Class Education. The whole neighborhood is going down.
You don't know how to run the fryer. You keep saying this. Nobody teaches you how to run the fryer. Not that you want to run the fryer, you just sort of feel like you should know how. Sometimes the fryer beeps with the wrath of a thousand angels, and you're the only person over there, and you just sort of push the button that's flashing until the beeping stops. No one has ever yelled at you for this, so you keep doing it.
A middle-aged white women approaches. Your coworkers cower. Quietly, out of her field of vision, the manager reaches for a broom.
Extra toppings are in the cooler under the make-table.
You work closing on Fridays. Someone has to run the giant mopping machine. "His name is Oscar," the manager says. Ah, yes. The label on his handles says BELOVED OSCAR.
It's nice to know you aren't the only person who's losing it.
The radio transitions directly from "Barbie Girl" to something angsty by Linkin Park. You are coming to a deeper understanding of John Mulaney's Salt 'n Pepper Diner skit.
You work opening on Sundays. There is no mixed cheese.
"It's not a Sunday unless something goes wrong!" says your coworker, grinning maniacally. He says this every Sunday.
Extra liquids, like sauce, mustard, and nauseating butter substitute, come in large plastic bags. They are weighty and dense, and inspire a nightmarish maternal instinct when lifted. Meme-ic Pixie Dream Coworker hefts a bag of ketchup on her hip and announces, "Don't talk to me or my son ever again." Humor cannot dispel the specter of existential horror.
Extra mushrooms and olives are in giant cans. You hate running the automatic can-opener, and avoid it whenever possible.
Ambiguously Slavic Coworker and Meme-ic Pixie Dream Coworker wrestle with an empty ketchup dispenser and the ketchup ~~baby~~ bag. They have pierced it incorrectly. Ketchup splatters the counter. It's a gruesome sight. "We're losing him!" one cries. "Apply pressure!"
Calm and Collected Team Lead pokes his head over the counter. "He's gone. Time of death: 10:56 AM."
Extra cheese is in the Chrome Refrigerator.
You take another ~~baby~~ bag and try to pierce it with the ketchup dispenser. You know how to do it, one of the managers showed you. You have confidence. Oh God. You forgot how to do it. There is ketchup on your hands. There is ketchup everywhere. You're a murderer. How could you?
If you can't find spare product, ask a manager to get some from the back.
You are overcome with remorse. Your hubris has ruined everything. How poetic. You change your gloves, but the damning smell of ketchup remains. Good God, it's sickening.
You're a monster. You don't even recognize yourself anymore. The empty ketchup dispenser haunts you. What have you done? This wasn't even part of your job. What have you done?
Onions and tomatoes are cut in-house. If you're out, you'll have to go do that yourself over in deli.
The manager tells you to quit messing around, like you didn't see her shitfaced-drunk and screaming herself hoarse on Snapchat last night. She re-pierces your victim with surgical precision. A life is saved, but at what cost? Your humanity lies in shreds with the spilled ketchup.
A 90s rock song is playing. It has an electric guitar, some drums, and a slightly whiny male voice. It goes bumm DAP ba-dup-ba-dum DAP. Is it the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Was it on the Shrek soundtrack? Is it the same song that was playing ten minutes ago? It calms you. Yes. The emotion you are feeling is calmness. Perhaps you are, in fact, free. Freefalling. Yeah, you're free...freefalling...
You draw a little fist on an empty breadsticks bag and leave it on the drinks cart in the hall. It says, "Fistbump me if you need encouragement!" At this point you might as well just staple a sign to your forehead that reads SEEKING PEER VALIDATION.
The Refrigeration Corner is a liminal space. You stand in the cool quiet dimness, dwarfed by the Chrome Refrigerator, shoving illegal cheesy fries down your throat. The tranquility is akin to that of sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Walking in front of the fryer is like ice skating. You try not to do that.
In your dreams, strange masked drummers go bumm DAP ba-dup-ba-dum DAP. You're out of onions. You're always out of onions. The deli workers, pretty girls with thin straight hair, stare at you with scandalized faces. There's ketchup everywhere.
No one knows what to do with the first ketchup ~~baby~~ bag, a mangled corpse. You leave him broken on the counter. Meme-ic Pixie Dream Coworker's sweet son...the tragedy is overwhelming. He was such a gentle boy.
Somewhere wrist-deep in marinara, spattered with pizza grease, you have lost your honor. Stolen! It fills you with shame. To restore it, you must best Capitalism in hand-to-hand combat, as your ancestors did before you.
You have submitted several formal combat requests to Capitalism's condescending secretary. You have waited four to six weeks for a response. Still the villain evades you! You are distraught, and spend your shifts weeping gently into the Italian sausage.
I throw myself before you, and bemoan/My fifteen-hour work week--pity me! Behold the wretched pizza skills I hone! Ignore the time I squander shamefully!
For I have friends who labor twice as long/And spend on textbooks and tuition fees--
I sit around and write this stupid song/And spend my parents' money as I please.
O, all the final essays I should write
And all the final chapters I should read!
Still, to my fickle Muse I bend tonight
For "max procrastination" is my creed.