Cola Presents:


			Hydroplane


Sean woke five minutes late for work, feeling just as tired as when he had
gone to bed. 11:05. Five minutes late. Slept for sixteen hours, and still
tired. He stared at the lights on the clock for a couple of minutes. 11:07.
At night. He got up, and rummaged arround the pile of clothes in his room
for his uniform. The light blue uniform was still stained with grease from
the night before, and reeked of sweat. He put it on, and left for work. He
had forgotten his nametag and hat, but it didn't matter.

The bike there was easy. Ten minutes max.

Sixteen hours and not a single dream.

Sixteen hours and still tired.

Damn.

The doors were locked, but the closing crew let him in. His boss looked at
him, but didn't say anything. It wasn't worth getting mad. They needed him,
and he would just say that he slept in, anyways.


Sean filled his mop bucket and went directly to the womens washroom. Noone
ever came in the womens washroom at night, and it was a good place to hide
from the drunks outside. He sat on the counter. It was Friday. Second day of
the week. Saturday would be the worst. They stayed open till twelve on
saturday, so he had to do actual work, which meant avoiding the drunks. The
hardest part of the job were the people who wanted in after hours. If he let
them in, he'd get shouted at by his boss, but they wouldn't go away. The only
solution was to watch for them, then hide in the washrooms untill they left.

He threw some water on the floor. Insurance. If anyone did come in, they'd
see that he was mopping the floor.

On monday his girlfriend had told him something he didn't want to know.

He should have been angry. Why wasn't he angry?
He had played the part. Acted shocked, hurt. 
Why wasn't he angry? Why wasn't he angry?

A while later, Sean went outside to the dining area, and started puttting
chairs on the table. He was so tired. The light from the parking lot made
the plants outside seem glossy. He got a broom and started sweeeping. If you
didn't do a good job sweeping, then the mop later looked horrible. You had
to get all of the corners, under all of the tables, and those damn chairs
that are fixed in place on posts. The wheels on the childrens seats allways
made lines of dirt on the floor, so he moved tose somewhere else. His whole
body was slow. He was exausted, allways exausted. Coffee had stopped helping
a couple weeks ago.

Why wasn't he angry?

Mopping was easy. Two passes, no thinking. The first pass made the dirt show
up, the second sopped up the water. He couldn't ever make the floors clean.
They were allways dirty. The manager had left without saying anything.  He
checked the time. Twelve fourty-seven. The shake machine went on "reheat" at
one. He poured himself a shake for later and stored it in the mini-fridge.
He went back to mopping. Moving the Ronald McDonald statue was allways a
problem. The foam base was infested with mold, and so it made a huge green
circle wherever you put it. He didn't bother. It didn't matter.

The kitchen allways needed three or four pases because it was so greasy. The
kitchen was allways covered with grease; the deep fryers sent off a mist of
grease. The best you could do was clean off most of the grease and buff the
rest. You could never get it off. Even after a shower it was still there.

His favorite job was cleaning the fry dispenser. Sean could never understand
how it managed to get so much gease on it. Every surface was covered by a
centimeter of grease, but all it ever held were potatoes, and even then, the
potatoes weren't heated. For some reason cleaning the fry dispesnser allways
gave him a bit more energy.

Sean had nothing else to do until the manager showed up in the morning. You
could never clean everything because then the manager would see that you
didn't have enough work. It was Three, so he had three  hours. Initially, he
had tried to talk to the permanant maintenance people, but they were all
immigrants from India who could speak at best broken english. The old man
was on tonight, and he made even less sense than the rest.

TeleToon used to play South Park at Three, but they had stopped a couple of
weeks ago. Sean settled on an info-mertial of some guy selling Beanie Babies.
Apparently some Beanie Babies were really expensive. Sean didn't pay
attention. He was too numb. He just sat.

At ten to six, Sean started cleaning off the tables. The manager showed up a
few minutes later. Sean took out the garbage, and spent the next half-hour
looking busy. He left fifteen minutes early.

Sean went to bed. He had taped peices of cardboard to his windows to keep
the sunlight out because it was keeping him up. Saturday would be hell.



Why wasn't he angry?

Sixteen hours and not a single dream.





By Zarathustra


Props: 	Textfile.com 	(Keep the faith)
	CDC		(Dem0nSeed Elite r0ckz!)



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COPYRIGHT MARCH 11, 2000 BY COLA                        CONTACT: COLA@COLA.CX
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