My Syrupy Summer

“Does anybody have that JuicyTushyTracey with regular Coke instead of diet? What about the BustingBlowoutBananza?” 

I could barely hear what my coworker was saying over the Belligerent Beeping. I was just happy to be inside my shoebox workplace instead of outside on the pavement when the highs that day were 105°. The sweat marks on my back had finally dried up; what a relief. 

The next thing I knew, mango puree ran out at exactly the same time as the raspberry. These are our most popular purees, and the sticker machine just kept pumping out more tickets by the second. I’m quickly taking apart the pumps when I lose the spring in the glop, and before I know it, I have puree dripping all over my body. From my fingers to my elbows, I am covered in jam. Soon, it starts dripping off my elbows onto my Mary Jane lace-up Birkenstocks, which I decided to wear that day to try to expand upon the constraints of my uniform, thus making my shift more tolerable. The gloop is everywhere. The sixteen-year-old girl acting as the shift lead yells at me and pushes me off DrinkDesigner. They make me go outside.  

Before I can prolong my exit any longer, I hear someone complaining that their drink is chunky and tastes like coconut. I grab my iPad and go outside at once. 

There were over 50 drinks on the menu; I could not remember every single one. I usually went off the vibe of the name or what I thought I remembered and squirted random stuff into the cups. 

I walk up to the first car. 

“Hi! Welcome to Slurp! How are you today? I’m Great! Thanks! Is it your first time here? There are a TON of different flavours, so would you like for me to give you a run-down of our menu? The naughty soda is what we are known for! We invented it!”

I recommend the ShootingSurfer to them; it has five different fruit syrups in it. I upsell them and convince them to add 10 mini sugar cookies to their order. When I got to work that morning, my manager told me I was in last place performance-wise out of my 41 coworkers. I would need to sell more Enhancers like cookies and dough balls. 

When my shift is over, I lug my body through the parking lot towards the Total Wine, the fifth largest location in the country. I turn on my car and air it out; the thermometer says it's 109° inside. I made 70 dollars, but 52 pounds and 91 pence. Two weeks ago, I was in England. I decided to go to university there instead of staying in Florida because it is no place for an aspiring journalist. The weather in my town in North England is the best; it will be 75° and sunny all year. My housing contract wasn’t up; I just ran out of money. For four months, I would be back in my hometown.  

I felt like Stanley from Holes. I was banished to a Mormon boot camp in the desert and battered by greedy gargantuan customers who threatened to run me over with their trucks on ‘BigSips’ day. 

Throughout the summer, I noticed that I started talking differently. Every word I said was shortened to a single syllable, even if it only had one syllable to begin with. ‘Going to din’, ‘getting a match’, or ‘in the yar’, were common shortenings. I was supposed to make a couple of projects over the summer, but I had never felt more brain-dead. My hometown was an inspirational wasteland. I even started wearing cut-off denim shorts every day. I only noticed how weird they looked when my best friend came back from London, and her first look at me was at my bottom half. I thought I looked ‘farmer’s market chic’; that’s why I paired it with the bodysuit. 

I tried to tell people in England where I was spending my summer, but none of them understood the concept of my job. 

By my third month at Slurp, I started acting more like myself again. I was still cutting most of my words in half, but I remembered something important: I hate Slurp and everything it stands for. There were supposed to be fans and a covered walkway outside the shoebox, but the owners cut it out of the blueprints to save money. I was supposed to smile at the customers even if they threw a drink in my face. I was advised to encourage every customer to buy more drinks, get the biggest size, buy a gadget, a cup, and make small talk with them while doing it- but not to let the order times go over a minute. 

In my last month there, I really let loose. I threw random gloop in every drink and completely invented my own recipes for everything blended. I advised every customer to order a size down and not to order their kids any drinks. I told them the cookies were not worth it and took long water breaks inside. I complained to my manager that the company was evil and told customers our working conditions were inhumane. When taking orders, my voice came back down to a normal octave. Stanley had dug his final holes and was ready to stick up to the warden- boot camp was over. 

When I was thoroughly covered in stick and had lime juice in my eyes, it was finally time to close the lid on this chapter of my life. As I trekked through the desert-hot parking lot, I could see the faint mountain of Styrofoam cups all the way in the dumpster. Oh, what a unique sight I would miss. I patted the 20-foot-tall inflatable Slurp cup on my way out, weaving through the cars. I had lots of time to think on my journey home, as I zipped through three roundabouts and two 8-lane intersections before finally escaping the boot camp. I wondered if this would all just feel like a dream soon. I definitely didn’t have the money to show for it; I only made it out with a couple thousand, and I lost half of it to the conversion rate and the other on a trip before even making it back to England.  

I already don’t remember most of what happened at Slurp boot camp this summer, but I can never let myself forget that by the second month I started drinking ShootingSurfer and deliriously enjoying it.

Words by Lindsey Sheppard