Fiction and Drama

Claire Baglin

You have to be of age to mash the trash

This one’s my all-time fave, it smells so nice. The front-room trainer holds the special-surfaces cleaner under her nose. I love it, I just can’t get enough, want a sniff?

She juggles the cleaning products this way and that, pretends to spray a surface to show us how, but as she demonstrates all I can see is the tight blond bun behind her head, as if her brain had an annex back there.

The trainer introduces us to the sink, the clean zone. This is where it all starts, she explains, and we trample the stray bits of food on the floor drain. Before sending us out front she takes us into the bathroom to teach us by example, pulls out a disinfectant for the sinks. She rubs at the sink with a counter cloth, that’s what it’s called, presses her breasts to the rim to get behind the faucets. Not one single hair sticks out of her bun, it seems to have a life of its own, independent of her movements no matter how vigorously she scours the surface.

She caresses the soap dispenser and explains that we also have to wipe off the bathroom door handle. She dribbles a purple fluid over the top of a steel trash can and I find my head spinning. There are too many different fruits in all those scents and I’m fixated on that blond bun’s imperviousness to her body’s back-and-forths. I lean on the tall trash can, about to faint, and she tosses the cloth aside, straightens up to take out the phone in the back pocket of her jeans. I reflexively put my hand to the backside of my pants but my fingers find only a seam, a ridge of fabric folded over itself. As for my shirt pocket, it’s scarcely big enough for three packets of ketchup.

Once she’s checked her phone the trainer picks up the pace: order kiosks, cleaner, cloth every thirty minutes, wash your hands and change the trash bag, one-way signs on the tables, running with two trays, hands in crab position, just like a little crab you see, knot the trash bag and then the compactor, high chairs, stickers, sauces are at the counter, keep an eye out and take the trays to the tables as soon as they’re ready, one of you at the greeter station, one out front, standing broom.

Three weeks on drive-through and now I’m out front, the kingdom nobody wants, composed of the inner lobby where the customers eat, the terrace, the bathroom, and the trash room. I’m out front because I’m new here and the newbie’s place is where nobody ever wants to work. I understand I’m going to be here for a while. When I pick up a tray to take out to a table I know the crewmembers behind the counter had to fight for their cushy spot, shielded by that rectangle of concrete.

I learn that the trainer’s name is Chouchou and she’s the manager out front. Chouchou goes on to say that everyone loves her here, and when she walks through the automatic door at noon she turns around and calls out see you girls, so happy to have the break ahead of her.