Seriously, are you kidding me!?
The day started just like every other day of Haymaker's life. Musical notes rang out gently from his alarm clock, and he slowly opened his eyes into a new day. He rolled over, groaning and sighing, looking out of his bedroom window with one half-open eye. It was Six in the morning, the alarm told him, but Celestia had apparently decided to stay the rise of the sun for another hour.
Just five more minutes... he thought wearily, knowing even such a small luxury was beyond his deserving. His body creaked and cracked as he rolled out of bed, dimly illuminating the room with his horn. He shuffled over to a pile of laundry, sorting out a pair of pants and one of his uncountable work shirts.
After a few moments of sleep-deprived struggling, Haymaker finally managed to dress himself. He left his room, reaching out with his magic to grab his bare essentials: apartment keys, wallet, and music player, the latter of which he'd forgotten to charge the previous night, and so its power was down in the red.
A pair of headphones floated before him, somehow tangled into a Gordian knot despite the fact that he had laid them out perfectly normal the night before. After just a moment of skillful weaving, not to mention a few inappropriate words, he managed to unwind the mess and prepare his music for the walk to work.
* * *
Forest Rain's melodic voice filled Haymaker's ears as he strolled down the sidewalks of Manehattan. He hummed along with her music, and kept a wary eye on the first upcoming street intersection. Already, carriages were beginning to line the streets, and he could see several coming down the very street he had to cross. Which was typical, of course; it always just so happened to seem like every single pony in the city would race down the street just as he needed to go by.
This morning, however, was not so bad. After only three or four, he was able to safely trot on through. A long stretch of sidewalk lay before him and the next crossing, and he took advantage of it and set a leisurely pace.
* * *
The second crossing was much, much worse. He stood at the corner for at least two eras, possibly witnessing the rise and fall of entire civilizations before setting a single hoof onto the pavement. An endless stream of ponies and carriages, many of them school ones, zoomed on by. No traffic guard was on duty this early, and so the main street was little more than an organized demolition derby, built upon a very loose trust system.
Once or twice, a pony would stop and wave Haymaker on by, but the traffic in the other direction had all the determination of a freight train, and he didn't feel like getting trampled just yet. He waved back, letting the carriage driver go, who offered only an eye roll and a "screw you then, pal!", which Haymaker didn't even hear.
Finally, after what felt like a dozen lifetimes (but really was only a half-dozen minutes), he could move again. Other crossings lay in his path ahead, but the worst, he knew, was behind him.
* * *
Haymaker worked in what could barely be described as a grocery store. It offered only the most basic of amenities in terms of produce, but it served a surprisingly successful function as a glorified sandwich shop. Haymaker stood out in the back for just a minute, composing himself for the day. He cast away his dourness, and brought out his work face. A couple of coworkers trickled in with him, offering their good mornings, which he returned in kind. He clocked in, closed his eyes for one last-minute moment of meditation, and strode through the door between the back and the front.
"Good morning!" said Penny Pincher, the store's owner. He was a large, grey stallion, with a neat-trim cut and a face that was friendly enough at first, but could easily turn at a moment's notice. Haymaker sometimes worried for his sanity, for Penny Pincher seemed to truly believe that his store was the true center of the universe, and all else bowed before it. Even Princess Celestia had eaten there once, and he had catered several royal events. This, in turn, made Penny Pincher believe that not only did he own the store, but all the ponies within it. To say even the smallest negative about the store was an absolute affront, akin to treason.
"Good morning, sir," Haymaker replied, giving the stallion a nod and a half-smile. He walked behind the counter, where a couple of coworkers had begun their shifts an hour earlier, setting everything up. With the good mornings between them, Haymaker walked over and grabbed himself a coffee - the only thing, he felt, that kept him alive throughout the day.
He was barely able to settle himself in before the first customer of the day came in. Really? he thought, glancing sideways at the clock. It read Seven-Oh-Three, which meant this pony must have been camping outside of the door. "Good morning," he said.
"I want a daisy and daffodil sandwich," the customer said, talking over Haymaker's greeting. He simply nodded, grabbing the bread with his magic, and quickly put together the order. Not soon enough, the customer was gone, perusing other items of interest, without even a word of thanks.
* * *
Time was a relative concept in the workplace. To some, the day would fly by as fast as the Wonderbolts. To others, it would crawl and claw its way through, stopping every few moments to rest itself. The latter was how Haymaker felt, at least for the first few hours. It was always that way - a strange buffer of non-time before the exhilarating, manic lunch rush, where full hours were compressed into mere minutes. Perhaps the copious amounts of caffeine Haymaker consumed had an effect on his perception of time, as well.
Until, that was, it all came to a grinding halt with one single customer. There was always, always one a day, at the very least. Many times, it was the same one, trying new tricks and looking for new ways to score free food and start trouble. Their days were infinitely worse than his, Haymaker decided, not wanting to entertain the other idea that perhaps these types of ponies simply caused a ruckus for the fun of it.
"Is that your biggest roll?" the customer asked, pointing to a bread roll nearly as long as Haymaker's foreleg.
"Yes, but we-"
"Wow!" the customer blurted out, frowning. "The prices grow and the bread shrinks! What is Equestria coming to!?"
Haymaker bit the inside of his cheek, only to stop himself from saying anything. He learned, quite a long time ago, to 'pick his battles', and this particular one wasn't worth fighting. "Yes ma'am," he said, in the driest possible tone. "You know how it is these days."
"Don't I ever! Well, I suppose it will do. Give me that one, and give me an alfalfa and tifton sandwich, and give me all of your vegetables on it!"
Thank you Celestia for a simple order. It sounded hard enough, but in reality it was his favorite type to make. Haymaker decided to give this one a little extra attention, layering all of the vegetables nicely before tossing on the main ingredients. Deciding he'd let himself be a little proud of his work for once, which took all of thirty seconds, he began to wrap it.
"You put the mayonnaise on it, right?" the customer asked out of nowhere.
The entire world seemed to stop around Haymaker. His mouth began to twitch. "You... you didn't say mayo," he said quietly.
"Yes I did!" she blurted out. The other ponies in the store gave her a sideways glance, subtly inching away from her. "I said alfalfa and tifton, all of your vegetables, and mayonnaise on the bread!"
Haymaker ran the entire conversation back in his head. Had she said mayo the first time? He was almost certain she had omitted it, yet her insistence to the otherwise made him begin to question his own sanity. How could he not remember something from less than a minute ago? He took hundreds of orders each day, so why was this one so wrong?
He took only two seconds to come back to earth, quite literally shrugging off his current existential crisis. The hard part, now, would be getting the spread onto the bun without compromising the integrity of the rest of the sandwich.
It took only a moment, and he was finished. Folded neatly, wrapped in a sheet, cut perfectly in half, wrapped again. It was a process he'd done thousands of times by now, and it would be burned into his brain long after he'd left. He levitated the completed sandwich over to her and, to his great dismay, she seemed to frown at it.
"Did you cut it in half?" she asked, her tone full of snark.
"We cut them all in half," he replied, his voice completely devoid of any emotion or infliction. With these types of ponies, it was always better to stay as neutral as possible.
"It doesn't look cut in half."
"It's in two sheets of paper. I assure you it's cut."
She eyed him suspiciously, unwrapping the sandwich and discovering the indisputable truth. "Oh, so it is," she said, unwrapping one half as she walked away, eating it.
Haymaker stared daggers into the back of her skull, knowing he'd just given that creature a free meal. She'd take it up to the counter, insisting she'd already paid for it, demanding to know why she'd already eat it if it wasn't paid for, et cetera.
"Better you than me, heheh," said Roannie, one of his coworkers. Haymaker cringed away from him, smelling a faint combination of rye and hard cider on his breath... again. Roannie had many problems to his name, not the least of which was a penchant for imbibing before, during, and after work. He began rambling in Haymaker's ear, to which the latter simply drowned it out, letting his mind wander onto things he cared about while his body went back into the motions of customer service.
* * *
The end drew nigh. Haymaker watched the clock, waiting for it to turn over the hour and end his shift. He had the next day off, and he was ready to start it now! The rest of his evening was filled with leisurely activities - he had much reading to catch up on, a guitar to practice and play along to Forest Rain's newly-released songbook, and a whole backlog of video games to burn through before charging into new ones.
He stared the clock to death, grinding his teeth as it moved ever closer to that glorious time of freedom. He'd renew the battle against traffic on the way home, but it was a battle he almost always won. It was so close now - only half an hour to go! He was chomping at the bit to leave now, but it would be pointless ever since Penny Pincher decided to stop paying on the half-hours. He'd round it down to the previous one, and Haymaker would lose out on fifteen whole Bits, something he wasn't willing to do just for a little impatience.
"Hey." Haymaker turned his head. It was the manager, one of the few ponies he genuinely got along with. Haymaker could tell by the look on his face that there was no good news to be had now. "We just had a couple call-outs. Think you could stay 'til closing?"
Haymaker blinked. That half-hour began to stretch itself into an eternity, eventually gaining enough mass to collapse in on itself and create a black hole, which began to swallow the entire universe little by very little. Haymaker could feel himself falling into its event horizon, being stretched and pulled every-which-way, all laws of physics simply being tossed out of the window. The entire world shifted beneath his hooves, and time began to eat itself as it paradoxically remained a constant and yet fluctuated. The half-hour became five, out of nowhere, disrespecting science itself. All of his plans of relaxation shattered into billions of tiny pieces, scattering across the shambles of what was once his mind.
"Sure," he said.
Author's Note
To work in food service is to stare into the void, and have it stare back. This is, quite obviously, fictional, but some of the dialogue is inspired by actual conversations I've had before. If compounded stupidity were a physical form, it would dwarf Olympus Mons. This story is an exaggeration, but only by a bit, and merely a fraction of the things I've seen and heard where I work.
