adelaidemedblog

Tonight was a  good night, at KFC Prospect.

I got called in at 12am while trying to sleep.  I wasn’t on the roster tonight but apparently the store manager had collapsed during the week, leaving two shift supervisors and one assistant manager (all younger than me mind you) scrabbling to organise things.  This would explain Aaron, who makes the rosters, writing my name at the top of the roster during the week and not thinking that I would not be coming in to see it before the shift itself.

These days I still look nervously at the drive through window, half-expecting an almighty crash, glass flying to my face, and urgent sounds of world crisis coming to a head.  Should I open the warmer and hide behind the door, like last time, or should I run to the manager’s area, where gunshots may still reach me, but the emergency button must be pressed?  Almost automatically I check the bolt lock on the sliding window, and at the same time I constantly remind myself that hypervigilance is a symptom of post traumatic stress disorder.  Anyway, I’m sure PTSD is a normal, though somewhat undesirable and unpleasant, side-effect of such experiences.  Incidentally, I was kind of right and kind of wrong about what PTSD was like, when I talked about it last.  It is less of a dream and more of reality.  Less of drifting towards the curb and more of a head-on with oncoming traffic.  It’s quite unavoidable.

I have been more acutely aware lately of the poor everything I espouse, working at KFC.  From Kentucky Fried Cruelty to saturated fats and atherosclerosis, not to mention my own cardiovascular health, nothing about working there is any good.  Apart from the pay, which I think is quite good for what I have to do.   I remember being originally interested in doing graveyard shifts because I liked less people, more quiet working environment, and being able to form relatively close relationships with my fellow team-mates.  That has kind of happened.  But I didn’t expect that I would be doing graveyards consistently for the next 2 years, and still going strong, it seems.

Being a medical student I wonder if it is even morally or ethically right to be working at KFC.  Well at least I can’t see that I will work as a doctor and work at KFC graveyards, at the same time.  That would be completely wrong.  But that makes it completely wrong now, doesn’t it?  I mean, if I am going to do things like not take drug gifts and free meals (all of which I currently still do but continuously strive not to), what’s the difference?  I am being a hypocrite.  It’s much worse than anyone would think it is, except for socialists.

I really should quit.  But KFC has been good to me.  And I’m interested in the future.  There are 2 new stores opening up in Adelaide.  One city somewhere, the other also in the city, Hindley St.  I heard it’s going to be at least the 2nd graveyard store in SA.  Trial of graveyard first, close from e.g. 6am, and 10am open.  The first thing is that Prospect (my store) will probably be stopping the graveyard shift once Hindley St. gets up and running because:

a) Adelaide doesn’t need 2 KFCs open past midnight and

b) We lose money on most graveyards, and at best we do much worse than any day of the week.

But the funny, second thing that I found out tonight was that most of the new staff seem to be Indian.  Next to the Prospect store is the State Head Office of KFC, also the place where they interview and hire new workers.  Apparently (and this is not always the case) nearly every applicant was Indian.  I have to assume that they are overseas Indian students and not ABIs (Australian Born Indians), because all the Indians working at Prospect (about 10, out of 40) are not ABI.  The funny point was raised by Josh, the trusty shift supervisor on for tonight’s shift.  Prospect on graveyard gets some decent bogans through, but that would have to be completely overshadowed by how many Hindley St would get.  And with a store full of Indians…

“Indians and Bogans… haha!  Not a good mix…”