The blackening of the evening sky brought cool air as well as the foreboding of the torrential nightly rush. We cashiers loathed them all, the hooligans, drunks, snobs and savage overemotionals. In the chaos of a rush I might be unsettled enough to despise all customers. I became disgusted by every ethnicity, including my own for uncertain reasons that became logical as my overwrought mind and frayed nerves succumbed to desperation. A rush often convinced me that all customers were the enemy. This belief was only 89 percent grounded in reality.

Am I insane or do I just need a cigarette? Will I ever get off the clock or is this rush eternal? Another in an endless stream of automobiles rolls up to the speaker. I know this because my headset has beeped in my left ear. That nerve-racking beep that has come to feel like an ice pick thrusting into my brain, thereby destroying the region of my cerebrum that enables me to feel hope or give a rat's ass.

I've been languishing in this isolated drive-thru booth for four solid hours now. It feels like 15 hours, I wonder if my watch has stopped. The usual massive rush has been unrelenting and the customers have been wildly contemptuous. I try to think of myself as a machine--a hate machine, perhaps. I hate rude people and annoyances alike, but I wouldn't be so disdainful if there were only a dozen to contend with. The procession of lowlifes is seemingly infinite while the rush's typical duration precludes one from feeling hope. My mind is being battered by the consuming maelstrom of; cars, headset beeps, repetitive action, diesel engines, shouting people, whispering people and the vainglorious smirks of those who are clearly my intellectual inferiors. I can only feel desperation and vehement disgust.

Ironically, these feelings kept me going. I resolved that these senseless animals cannot break me or make me run away like a little bitch. Notwithstanding such colossal irritants, these feelings may have been extreme. Assuredly, McDonald's Dalrock after dark was an exceptionally extreme place to shovel shit.

The position of cashier/ordertaker is a fast-paced juggling act that quickly becomes painfully repetitive. In addition, people are far more likely to be combative and debasing from the security and perceived comfortable distance of their vehicle. They have nothing to say on the street and little to say on front counter, but sit their fat asses in a car and they sprout a set of erroneously used balls. "You need to turn up the volume, son. I can't understand shit you're sayin'." A so-called man under the mistaken impression that I could "turn up the volume" on the ordering speaker shouted this at me. Such degrading remarks were commonplace. A woman working at the second window had her life threatened on a separate occasion. They might even yell at the cashier on the hunch that their unprepared order would be botched by the grill crew. I now guarantee that it will be royally botched.

Attending to customers without gratuitous bloodshed was only one facet of the job's frustrations. The winter of 2000 proved that Hell can freeze over. My drive-thru window faced an open field from which freezing winds in excess of 15 miles per hour typically pelted my flesh. Closing this window at any point during the evening was unfeasible due to the nightly bumrush. The open window transformed my station into a wind tunnel as temperatures in the booth fell below 45 degrees, according to the thermostat. Bulky overcoats were too cumbersome and gloves obviously weren't an option.

The relentless wind rendered my hands, face and groin completely numb. The numbness of my face could make my speech sound like that of a stroke patient's. Frigid walls of wind gave my skin a burning sensation and caused my eyes to water. If I opened my mouth widely while speaking, the wind would stimulate my gag reflex. Each winter night I resigned myself to these discomforts and progressed beyond the point of shivering. Add these conditions to the perennial customer insanity and you get a desperate register slave on the edge.

I hate you, me and the rest of the world and I was going to kill myself when I got home, regardless. Adequate provocation for my leaping from this window to savagely beat your ass would earn you my eternal love.

I eventually left that hellhole in favor of a similar one. My reasons for rotting there for 13 months remain ambiguous. Eleven of those months were spent in the booth, which resembled a dismal cage at the zoo surrounded by unsupervised children. After some 40 hours a week at that store, I am confident that no future job will be worse or pay any less. I am equally confident that Ronald McDonald's lacerated corpse will be recovered from a North Dallas dumpster.