Slave to the End.

One of the few benefits of working this bullshit fast food job is that you get to meet a wide diversity of people — that and you learn, out of necessity, how to let people go.

In the too-many years I’ve been here, the perpetually revolving door and rather high turnover has made me realize that few relationships last forever and as sad as it is, that’s okay. You have to adapt. You have to learn to let go. People say they’ll keep in contact, that they’ll visit, and sometimes they do for awhile, but they inevitably move on.

So I guess what’s apparently on its way isn’t that much different.

Donny, the maintenance man for the morning shift, is eighty years old, I learned the other day. Granted, I’m bad at judging age, but I never would have guessed he was that high up there. For the years that I’ve worked with him, he’s always been an active guy. He’s never said it outright, but it seems clear to me he wouldn’t still be working if his wife wasn’t so restless and determined to keep a job herself. He enjoys being at home, in his garage, engaged in woodworking, pursuing his creative talents. And he is indeed talented — he’s shown me several things he’s done, and they all look fantastic.

It was a few months back that he told us at work that he had gotten diagnosed with colon cancer. Rather than going the radioactive route, he elected surgery, and initially it seemed to be going well. He’s been back in the hospital now three times. They fucked up the surgery and now he’s lost a tremendous amount of weight and is in a good degree of pain. No one wants to state it outright, but the looks on everyone’s faces conveys the same, dire expectation.

It feels unjustified, cruel that he never really got to enjoy retirement. Granted, I’m talking as if the guy is already gone, and he’s not, and as much as I’d miss him working here, I hope to fuck that if he makes it through this he finally quits this shit hole and can truly enjoy the time he has left.

No one deserves to be a slave to the end.