southsamurai

Hmmm, if you’re asking if the external flow of what we perceive as time would shift according to an observer’s state of mind, that’s doubtful.

But our perception of time isn’t the same thing as the flow of time. Our temporal sense is definitely subjective, and there’s been some research into that (though damned if I can recall the details without looking it up, and I’m getting a bit brain fried tired, so not up to doing so).

Anticipation, be it fearful or happy, definitely shifts how we perceive time.

No idea about anyone else, but I tend to only chime in if the question spurs some kind of thought, or I have a story that matches, or some other kind of quasi useful input.

So it can be weeks before I jump in, or multiples in the same day.

It’s easy when you use the same password for encoding everything.

I rarely worked the window, and it was only when someone was on break, or we were under staffed and the other people on shift weren’t exactly capable of running a register.

But we had a few regulars.

My personal favorite was “farmer man”. Homie would ride through with his animals. Usually it was one of those pot belly pigs, named Harvey. But he had a goat named Bill, a rooster named Charlie, and sometimes a nanny goat called Maria.

Why those names? No idea, it was drive through, so no time for long chats. But he’d order for them by using their names, as in, “I’ll have a whopper, and Harvey here’ll have a cheeseburger.”

The awesome visits from him were when the cab of his truck was essentially full of critters. One day, the rooster was with him, along with a bunch of hens just chilling on the passenger side.

Really good customer, he would roll through a few times a week, always polite and had his shit ready. He was literally a farmer, there’s plenty of them out here in the sticks. One of the normal window staff asked him if she could bring her kids to see a farm, and he was happy as hell to say yes. His critters were essentially pets, though the chickens were an egg source. Dude was a one man petting zoo lol.

Then there was “coffee”. He’d roll up, and order “coffee”. That’s it, nothing else. And I mean that’s all me would say. You’d ask what size, and he’d just repeat “coffee”. At first, people just got mad, assuming he was fucking with them. But he kept coming back. Eventually the manager just said “fuck it, tell him he’s getting a large”. He got told that, and to drive forward. He’d take the large coffee, hand over his money, and that was it. But he never said anything. If you told him to have a nice day, he’d nod and smile a little.

There was also “naked lady”. As the name might indicate, she would come through naked. There would be a visible pile of clothes in the passenger seat of her car, sometimes just a robe, but usually what looked like jeans and a t-shirt. Her order varied. But she’d been coming there for years by the time I ran into her at the window.

It was usually only night time, fairly late, but every now and then she’d come through during breakfast rush. Story was that she had called in one day to ask if it was okay to come through the drive through naked, and the manager at the time thirty it was a joke and said she didn’t care as long as the money didn’t get pulled out of her twat, before hanging up. No idea if it was true or not. If you worked the window at her usual times and were new, you’d get warned amd asked if you were okay serving her. We were also warned not to be creeps about it.

She was probably in her early forties, attractive, and friendly. Knew the window workers by name and would chat while waiting, when it was night. Didn’t really flash anyone, didn’t try and get any extra attention, but didn’t make effort to hide anything either.

One guy asked for a better look one night, and she said that he could look all he wanted, but she wasn’t putting on a show. Manager gave him hell over it, though the lady didn’t complain about it.

There was one lady that was usually on nights that wouldn’t deal with her, and that’s how I first encountered naked lady. Got called up from the kitchen and asked if I was okay taking care of a naked customer. I was in training to be a nurse’s assistant at the time, so I didn’t have an issue with nudity. It had already become just kinda unimportant to me. So I just shrugged and said sure. The manager warned me to be chill and that was that.

Nice lady.

What was weird was seeing her elsewhere in clothes. She was just as friendly if you ran into her at the grocery store or whatever. But it was always a little jarring, like she should be naked everywhere lol.

Beyond that, it was just the usual drunks, potheads, and occasional crack or meth head that were weird enough to stand out.

Probably me telling my manager to go fuck herself.

I think it was justified, but barely.

It was a fast food joint, so not exactly a job I was willing to take shit over.

I have long hair, and have since jr high. So did other employees, but only women and girls. A hair was found in food and it had to be mine, despite my hairnet, despite it being the wrong color, and not the same length.

I pointed all this out and she told me I needed to cut mine. I asked if this was a new policy for everyone, she said just me. So I told her to go fuck herself. Now, I’d have just said no politely, and let her fire me for something bullshit and collect unemployment. But back then, I had less self control.

After that, it was probably a dude I worked with at a nursing home. Weird dude, but a generally good partner to work with. Unfortunately, he liked stealing panties from patients. Why? Nobody knew. He said he didn’t wear them, and it wasn’t a sex thing. And that’s all he would say on the subject.

Dude was lifting them after they got back from laundry services, stuffing them in his pocket. He had taken enough that it was noticeable, as in the rest of the staff was having trouble finding them for the patients to wear. You expect some loss of clothing via laundry, or wear and tear, but not just underwear, and not in bulk unless there was some kind of accident in laundry, like a bleach spill.

The laundry staff were questioned about it, and it was pretty obvious it wasn’t them since they could have just said items were too damaged or stained, and nobody would have questioned it. They would have had records of tossing them, even if they were stealing them and faking it.

Dude got found out when he fucked up and pulled a pair out with his keys in the break room. You can’t mistake a pair of big cotton panties for anything else, and the patient name was inked on.

With that, he was questioned by the head nurse, then the administrator, and gave no satisfactory answer. He did, however, return the pilfered panties when threatened with a call to the police. Not that it would have amounted to anything, but he didn’t want the attention.

When I talked to him later on, he still wouldn’t say why he did it. We had all kinds of silly theories cooked up, and I suspect that the one that he had some kind of mother or grandmother fixation was true, minus the bit about him being a budding Norman Bates taking them to dress up his mom’s body.

Last I heard, he left the state, so I doubt I’ll ever run into him to try and ask again.