Chipotle: A Short Story

For the past two years, I’ve been working at the local Subway. Lame I know, but the pay was pretty good and the work was easy enough. And I could honestly say that I’ve made some lifelong friends there. Everyone who has worked at a fast food chain has had their fair share of wild stories. One friend of mine, who worked at Chipotle was held at gunpoint while being robbed late at night! She somehow managed to fend off the robber by herself and let's just say she had one hell of a vacation in Hawaii all payed for by the company, just so the story wouldn’t get out to the news. Anyways, other than almost getting into a fist fight with a couple of drunks when I tried to kick them out, I never had a story to tell, up until last Tuesday.

It was

Six minutes tops if the customer is very undecisive. But this man was different. This customer took so much time and care to pick every single detail of his sandwich as if it were his last meal. I have never seen such a thing and after debating which type of meat he liked I pushed in the sub into the toaster. I never really liked awkward silences whenever I wait for the bread to be toasted so I like to at least engage a little conversation with the customers. I started to ask him how was his day was going so far. He further explained how today was probably one of the worst days of his life. For a moment, I was a little speechless, for the life of me I could not have thought of ways to cheer the man up but I back to yesterday. I started to explain that my day started off with burning my hand while trying to pour hot water, how I managed to crack my phone with just a single, clumsy drop. Bad enough I had to walk home soaked in the rain while going to the bus stop only to notice that I’ve taken the wrong bus ten minutes after I got on. To top it off I was left shivering, finding out that I was locked out. To my utter surprise, the previously sad and unemotional man was now laughing hysterically, with tears trickling down his face. I guess what I said worth a little chuckle, but it wasn’t that funny. I was glad to see him smiling though. I finished up his sandwich and he went off to happily sit down to enjoy

It wouldn't be so terrible if my beautiful wife and daughter were still alive. But they're not, and today is the one year anniversary of their deaths. One hellish year since that idiotic drunk driver crashed into them at 110 km at a crossway. They did not deserve to die that night, but they did. Since then I am not the same person. Hell, who could be? I'm just a shell of my former self. I try to come back and become my former self, but that wasn’t in me anymore. Most people don't bother with me anymore, and I know I come off as rude but I really didn't think I had any positivity left in my life, in my soul. Until today. Until today I hadn't laughed, or smiled for that matter in a year. But you achieved the impossible, you made a sad old man cry tears of happiness. I wanted to thank you for that. For you have put me on cloud 9, and made me realize that life isn't all that bad. You have given life to a dead