staff at a fast food shack along the highway. (ontario, 2001)

sandy, braces, leads a dozen high-school minions who make up the ‘burger team' towards some stark efficient goal only upper management knows, her hair in a pony and a net so as to not confound her headset, proud to be called ‘sandy' by those brave american travellers who believe they should read the plastic name badges and should request free smiles and should fill out the comment cards that could earnestly propel sandy towards yet another monthly staff accolade: maybe a trip to the theme park and free value meals for her kin; her poppa's never been so proud.

rick, cook, spits on the floor before someone looks, spreads ooze on a bun, turns the oil on, portions the meat, enjoys the way the heat makes him sweat like sports, the way the air coats his hair and stuffs his pores and brings the stainless steel in close like the way he would imagine a submarine at war, all red-lit and frantic, rick in the boiler, his hands butchered red on a hot pipe, slaving away to preserve the cause, he looks at his watch and sees two more hours on his shift...time to bunker down and get ready for the rush.

andrew, thirty-two, single as a rat, hair cut close to his head, applying management theories he read from a book that was a christmas gift from a short lived love, keeps the hands of the cooks in gloves, times their breaks, checks the food, has a strange ache that runs from the knot of his tie to the edge of his blue sleeve shirt, that hurts most at the start of the day, or when some dirt-mouthed teenage girl quips his moustache makes him look gay, or some family man comes in and says, "hey, I went to school with that guy."

marcia, darkness, no one talks to her, and she'll be fired soon, but not before she steals fifty bucks from the till and masterfully covers her trail, not before she gives away forty cokes to forty wayward boys and leaves apple tarts for the rabbits and mice in back of the dumpster--sure her boyfriend dumped her in the middle of a shift, but she retaliated by wadding up her gum in the gears of some machine which made soft ice cream melt on to the floor-- her boss made her watch a company video called ‘not part of the team', which proved with graphs just how deeply apathy costs; marcia just laughs and looks off.