Most of this site is about systems: clinical data, proofs, pipelines. This entry is about the person who builds them. My first job was the drive-thru window at a fast-food place. I don't remember it fondly, but it shaped me, so I wrote one shift of it down the way I most like to make things: as a game. You can clock in at Patty's Drive-Thru in the arcade.
What made it into the booth
The order screen over the counter, where tickets turn yellow, then red, while you watch. A register that hid simple requests several menus deep. The automatic drink machine, which lost drinks often enough that re-entering them was part of the work. The coffee button I was not allowed to press, because I was not eighteen yet. A shift manager who could not stand to see anyone idle. Customers who talked into the speaker as if nobody was on the other end.
What stayed out
The chain in the game is made up and the people in it are renamed. Some of that job does not belong in a game, and it is not in this one.
What it taught me
The best manager I had there was the general manager, who was kind without having to be. Most of what I learned came from the rest of it: how quickly people stop seeing the person in the uniform, and how little it costs to be decent anyway.
Next shifts
Later slices may add the fry station on Fridays, the plastic trays I used to sing about, and the dish pit. For now there is one booth and one shift: clock in at Patty's Drive-Thru.