Day was better than Christmas.
The day I met Spocky, Kieran stood pondering his wristwatch, sweating in the late-morning heat. Benny’s divided their staff into those they trusted to tie a neat Windsor and those who would forever need to wear a company-issued clip-on strip of polyester. Whatever ignominies the rest of life might inflict on him, Kieran would always belong to that stratum of the corporation trusted to tie their own ties. “PACE, yeah?” he said as I opened the door. “Punctuality. Attitude. Customer focus. Enthusiasm. Yeah?” The store was quiet and the tables had been wiped streaky with antibacterial spray. “You are… seven minutes late, yeah?”
“Am I?”
“Yes,” he said, exhibiting his watch. “And, I’ve checked your file. This is your third late arrival and you know what that means, yeah?”
“I get to keep your watch?”
“It means a formal written warning.” He wore a new cap with a high dome that made him look like an extraterrestrial cone head. Above his mouth, his freckly face was decorated with a light ginger down. These few wispy centipede legs were the only evidence of his ongoing attempts to produce a moustache (facial hair was banned at Benny’s, but they permitted groomed moustaches). “Well, what you waiting for? You’re now eight minutes late. Yeah?” He took a heavy set of keys from his pocket and lobbed them in his right hand.
The staff room was a small square box that contained thirty lockers and a table for two. There was an ironing board (someone had stolen the iron), a broken video player, and a television that was trapped on BBC One. The floor was strewn with plastic cups, polystyrene foams, and cardboard fry cartons, and the room had a strange smell, as if a diseased animal had died in one of the lockers. There was only one other guy in the room; I didn’t recognise him, and he didn’t acknowledge me. He appeared to be reading a book. “Is the TV knackered again?”
“I don’t know,” he said, turning the page. He wore a black trench coat, stone-washed jeans, and cheap trainers. His head was shaved and he wore spectacles with a thin black frame.
“What you reading?”
“It’s just a novel.”
“Let’s see,” I said, grabbing it from him. “The Dispossessed,” I read, making it sound stupid. There was a picture of a planet on the front. “What’s this, Star Trek or something?”
“No, it’s about this alternative civilisation. These people set up a utopian society on the moon of—”
“Sounds shite,” I said, throwing my jacket in an empty locker.
He reached for his book, thumbed to his page, and scratched his neck. That was when Raj crashed the door against the lockers. “Wayne, motherfucker!” He made to punch fists but I messed up the timing and his knuckles landed in my open palm. “Alright?” he said as we clasped hands. “What sort of time is this? Listen man, we’re gonnae be busy as fuck the day so I’m gonnae need you tae work your ass off, aye?”
I tugged my cap on and saluted. “No bothers, chief.”
Raj’s real name was Rajiv, or Rajesh, or Rajani. We called him Raj because it was easier. Raj wasn’t allowed his own tie, but he did get to wear trousers with pockets (a licence denied to regular staff). He was alright, Raj—alright for a Paki. That’s probably what they’ll put on his gravestone: “Here lies Rajesh (or whatever his name was). He was alright for a Paki.” Although he had contended with it all his life, at times you could see that Raj still struggled to accept the Dundule understanding of geography: the population of Dundule maintained that Pakistan was a massive country, starting near Bucharest and stretching across Turkey, North Africa, much of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and Sri Lanka. “Hoy, who the fuck are you?”
The new guy looked up from his book. “I’m Owen Noonan. I just started today.”
“Well, shit, get your uniform on!”
“They never gave me one.”
“Machod, were you gonnae sit there till one grew on you?”
“Nope, I’m off at five.”
“Oh Wayne, we’ve got a smart one here. What you reading?”
“Star Trek or something,” I said.
The new guy showed Raj the cover. “No, it’s about these people go to live on the moon and—” He bent over the table with a phlegmy cough.
“Can you speak Klingon?”
“Captain Spock, eh?”
“I’ll get you a uniform. I’ll send it to you in the transporter beam.” You could hear Raj laughing as the door swung closed.
“He’s awright for a Paki, eh?” said Gordon, crashing the grill tongs onto the grease trap.
“What?”
“I says Raj is awright for a Paki.”
“Aye, suppose.”
Gordon had started at Benny’s two months after I had, but we’d known each other since school. He’d been planning to follow his uncle into the jewellery trade, but when that didn’t work out, I persuaded him to join me in the burger game. I enjoyed working with Gordon even if it was hard to talk above the background noise—metal trays cymballed steel surfaces, grills hissed, bun spatulas clattered, fry baskets crashed through the automatic racking machine. “Someone hit that fuckin’ timer!” shouted Raj because the “Time to wash your hands” beeper had been ringing for two minutes—preep preep, preep preep, preep preep—like a phone call that nobody wants to answer.
“Woah, where you going?” said Raj, stopping Lucy as she walked through the kitchen.
She paused by the milkshake machine, holding her apron. “Kieran says I’ve to count a float.”
“Kieran!”
“What?”
“Did you tell Lucy to count a float?”
“Yeah, she’s going on tills.”
“Fuck off,” said Raj, brandishing the floor plan. “I’ve got Lucy and you’ve got Captain Picard through there.”
Kieran studied the plan and stroked his tie. “Okay, but whose shift is it, yeah?”
“It doesnae matter whose shift it is; you cannae steal my staff just cause you fancy them.”
Lucy looked embarrassed, and Kieran pulled the keys from his pocket, tossing them from one hand to the other. Everybody fancied Lucy. “If you’d ever been on the ABC shift supervisors course then you’d know about PROSE—Plan, Review, Organise, Supervise, Encourage. There’s the plan, yeah? Here’s me reviewing it, ‘Hmmm.’ And here’s me organising: ‘Lucy, you’re on tills today.’ Okay?”
The milkshake machine had been making an enteric growling noise, and now Raj removed the lid and peered inside. “Buzz!” he said. “Get us some shake mix!” He turned back to Kieran, wielding the lid like a shield. “No danger are you swapping Lucy for that prick. No danger.”
“Raj, at the end of the day, I’m the shift runner, so all the staff, including you, are under my jurisprudence, yeah? It’s not about any one area; it’s about maximising sales and improving the performance of the whole team. Yeah?” Kieran tossed his keys higher, caught them, and slipped them into his pocket. “Go on, love,” he said, patting the small of Lucy’s back. “Put your apron away for me.” So Lucy strolled past the chicken vats and paused by the backroom