Tommy Hogg:
Mardi had had enough. She quit. She quit yesterday too. But today was too much. The shake machine wasn’t working. She ran out of ketchup, and now someone’s broken the toilet seat.
She didn’t want to quit. But running this McDonald’s on her own is just too much. She thought that if she got up early enough she could plan for everything. She diced the onions, thawed the meat, even counted out change in advance of sales so that everything would be as efficient as possible during the day.
She wanted just a little restaurant, to run her own business without the risk of bankruptcy. And what’s less risky than McDonald’s? She made her own toys at night to put into the Happy Meals the next day. She invented her own sandwiches like not just “The Big Mac” but “The Biggest Mac” which was five hamburgers stacked on top of each other. It was fun.
But this was too much. The line went out the door and snaked around the building. The first thing to go was the drive through. She couldn’t be in two places at once. Taking the order from the microphone and serving customers at the counter got too confusing. And then she had to close Playland because someone took a shit in the ball pool and there just wasn’t time to clean it all out.
She thought being the only employee of her own McDonald’s would be fun and unique. And for the first week or so it was. But now word has spread and everyone’s coming. A lot of them are rude. They’re tired of waiting in line and she rarely sees a friendly face. It’s not like Mardi to quit. She has worked almost every day of her life since she was fifteen. But she wanted this job to be fun, not another habit to fall into. Today, she promises herself, will be her last day. 
