The Food Barn

Fry Cook was a very simple pony. He stood at an average height, with a bright orange coat and long yellow hair, like floppy fries. A short stubble of a beard went around the lower half of his muzzle, but he never bothered to shave it, as it never grew out for some reason. He never had any problems growing up. He had a loving family, and a good education and childhood to be a respectable and understanding citizen. Of course he was a simple pony.

He's a fry cook, for Celestia's sake.

He is the main cook and manager of the Food Barn, but if it was up to him, he would have named the restaurant more creatively, instead of something called "the Food Barn". Instead, he was promoted to the position by the last manager. Sadly, he was promoted as a gift from that last manager's last will and testament. No one knows how he died, but they say it involved the fry cook, twelve eggs, and a half cooked chicken.

For the fry cook, he knew all was true, but the half cooked chicken was actually just a griffon who was angry and got careless. Can't say the guy had it coming to him too, according to Fry Cook.

Fry manages the place well, at least in the financial and satisfaction aspect of the restaurant. It would be an easy job too, if Fry didn't have the strangest group of employees to ever be working together in small business.

"Hey, Fry?" A small grey pony head appeared in the doorway of Fry's dusty office. It held a musty, but proud air to it. A long line of paintings of past managers were seen along the wall adjacent to the doorway, showing the average eye that the restaurant has lasted for quite a long time, which is why a proud feeling lingered; to Fry though, it lingered like a bad smell.

"Yes, Miss Frost, what is it?" The orange pony asked. Fry looked to the door with a stern gaze, an emotion he had quickly mastered and made it his personal look a long time ago.

The full body of the grey earth pony in question appeared. A long, silvery white mane and tail highlighted a soft grey and neatly trimmed coat. She was also small in stature. So small, she could easily be mistaken as a teenager, even though she was twenty three, a year older than her co-workers. It did not help that she had had a youthful face to go with her almost winter incarnate colors.

"Coach gave that tap water you told us not to use to a customer..." Frost seemed to shrink at each passing word, turning her into a smaller pony, now looking like a foal.

Fry sighed loudly. "And did it explode again?"

"Y-Yes?", Frost said, returning to her normal size seeing that Fry Cook wasn't going to yell at her.

"How bad is it?" Fry asked.

A yelp was heard along with a yell of "MY BACK IS ON FIIIIIRE!"

Fry recognized the voice of the yell. "Not even stopping at breaking the laws of physics by turning water into fire, huh? NOW WE JUST MAKE IT EXPLODE!" Fry exclaimed. Frost shank into an almost baby foal size now. "I... I'm sorry Frost. I shouldn't have yelled at you. You're the only one here that hasn't caused anything out of line. Go grab a bucket of water and help with cleanup. I'll start writing the reparation check." Fry soothed Frost, who grew again back to her normal size. She left with only a meep of acknowledgement to Fry Cook.

Fry spun his chair back into his desk.  He felt sad for yelling at Frost for something she didn't do. She really was the only one that had been honest with him in the last two years since he hired her. Everyone else has caused him grief at least one day or another.

He could think of the one that caused him grief on more than one day.

But now that was in the past. And the past always makes him ponder. He was not fond of pondering. He slid out the drawer underneath the left side of the desk and pulled out a checkbook. Clicking a pen, he held the writing utensil in his mouth and starting writing when he realized something that made him drop the pen with his mouth agape.

"FROST! MAKE SURE YOU DON'T USE THE..." A resounding boom reached his ears, as his moment of fear was realized.

"...Cursed tap. Tepoti..." Fry ran out the door of the office, leaving a spinning chair and half finished checkbook.

~

"I am terribly sorry, Mr. Rich, for that commotion." Fry calmed down the victim, a gentlecolt from Canterlot, who was on his way back to his current residence in Ponyville.

"Ah, it's no matter Fry. I know an angry unicorn's curse when I see one," replied the pony with a short laugh. "We've been friends for some time, I know that there is always something wrong going on at this establishment."

Fry considered himself lucky that the victim was a close friend who would understand why water apparently wasn't fire-retardant in the Food Barn.

"I can make a reparation check if you want, Mr. Rich."

"Oh that would be a convenience if you don't mind, but I must ask, why not get a unicorn to repair the water curse?"

"Trust me when I say paying the consequences is better than fixing the problem," Fry seethed with a growl. He remembered the last bill that came when he ordered a mechanic to come fix one of the stalls at the motel.

"Well, I guess we all have to cope with our problems. Well, I must be off. Thank you for the check, although I wish some other things would have been damaged, so I wouldn't have to take so much from you!" Mr. Rich laughed.

Filthy Rich left the restaurant, a bit weary but none the less unharmed. The same could not be said for the Barn.

As expected, a wooden Barn should have some burn marks from the explosion. While the restaurant was reinforced with metal beams, it was still the Barn that was raised all those years ago when it was made for a small town. That town has left, but the restaurant survived thanks in part to the newly constructed roads at the time. Fry scanned the room if anything was out of place. The Barn looked like any other barn you would find. A red interior with space in the middle for tables, with the stalls acting as booths. As the Food Barn was a family establishment, or they hoped to be, according to Fry, some children were running around the tables. At this time though, they still were crying at the explosion that occurred a few minutes ago. Fry never tolerated crying, so he ordered the patrons to try and calm their kids down, to mixed success.

It will have to do, Fry thought, as he walked next to a sobbing, but now silent filly as she rested in her father's arms.

"Well, nothing major broke, so Sparks will be able to fix the damage," another earth pony appeared next to Fry. This one was a cream color coat, but with blue dyed hair.

"Jax, you're the new kid, so you need to learn. Sparks is not the skilled mechanic you think he is," Fry replied.

"Believe me, I realized that after this whole thing. But this is comparably nothing, so he might actually not screw up this time."

Sigh, this kid won't learn the easy way, Fry thought.

"By the way, where is Serridge? I haven't seen him since the incident," Fry asked.

"I saw him going into the motel with another mare," Jax replied.

"Sigh. Is that whore ever going to say no one day?"

"I don't think so, Fry," Jax replied with an amused laugh at the insult.

"Well whatever the case, I'm calling a company meeting."

"We're not even a company..."

"Whatever. Get everyone to come to my office in the hour," Fry ordered as he closed the door to his office, shutting out the crying and squalling of the restaurant.

One day, Fry contemplated, one day I will go crazy. Ko'êroite...