The Daydream

            I was driving to work today when I started daydreaming, as I often find that I am able to pay more attention to the road while also doing something else, just as I most often am simultaneously taking notes and surfing the net during some classes. The following is an expanded version of the extremely short daydream I had. Take note: the following may be fictional, but it was a REAL daydream, therefore making it non-fiction, right?

Roughly a week after posting my recent blog entry about my workplace a lot of the hype had died down and I was no longer worried about any sort of repercussions due to the controversial nature of the post. I had been working for about an hour on the line when an older woman approached my station. She had close cropped graying hair and wore her forty-some-odd years around her hips like an inner tube. She carried a yellow legal pad and wore a grey pantsuit, unbuttoned. I asked her what she would like to order, she glanced at the menu and ordered something with surprising flippancy. While I was begging my order, she shuffled closer to the glass sneeze guard, leaned in close and whispered to me, “now tell me, when was your last break?” to which I answered a surprised “excuse me?” She clarified, “how long did you work before getting your first break?” I explained to her that I had only started working an hour prior to her visit, and so was not yet entitled or aching for a break. She wrote down everything I said, no matter how relevant to her “cause” and looked at me with pained sympathy as she left.

            As weird as that was, what was weirder was how many more people came to discuss working conditions with me and my coworkers in hushed tones over their obligatory burrito in the ensuing few days. We had as many incognito news reporters, with their pantsuits and fashionable bob haircuts, as we did teenagers on a Friday night after the championship game. All of them wanted the inside scoop on our working conditions. Were we forced to work through breaks or even off the clock? Did we really receive our weekly pay in unmarked envelopes full of 20’s on dark street corners? No, none of those things. In fact, the paper that sparked their interest was only a compilation of “worst-case-scenario” scenarios. But it was fun to mess with them.

            “They only let us eat food that was messed up on the line!” one of my coworkers whispered to a heavily made-up young woman, already pushing retirement at her TV news station. She gasped, and purposely messed up her order, only to find the line worker flippantly toss it in the trash. She glared at my coworker and walked out.

            “They make us stay after our shift to scrub the floors on our hands and knees,” one of my coworkers muttered under his breath while sweeping close to a young reporter’s table. She quickly scribbled something on her pad of paper and returned later that night to peer in through the glass windows, only to see everyone clock out exactly on time and leave after a long days work. She stomped her feet all the way to her bright red Prius.

           

In a blink it was over, the whole daydream. I was making the U-turn to get to work and it was over in an instant. But I wonder, is that off-duty reporter standing in my line only watching out to make sure we spent the required 30-seconds to wash our hands, or to catch any worn or weary looks on the line and misinterpret them as the forlorn looks of sweatshop workers, forced to work outside the state mandated daily limit. To them I say, it’s only a minimum wage job, only one step above the proverbial “flippin’ burgers”. You can’t  take it too seriously.