The company had a policy around employees smoking
weed
. It was allowed so long as nobody proved that they were smoking it on the job. The company didn't find that it inhibited their employees at all given that their tasks were so simple. Plus it made hiring easier. Word gets around, info like how you can be high on the job and not get into trouble. That's who you got the young people, and some older people who had decided to live less ambitious lives, in the door.
Drinking, of course, was not allowed on the job. That caused obvious impairment. Which was weird, he thought. He remembered back in high school when he would smoke, he and his friends would justify driving. Was it because weed really didn't impair your judgement or were they just making excuses?
And this goes without saying that these laws only applied to the actual restaurant employees. Not the people at the office watching them. They couldn't smoke or drink. He might like this job if he could do either.
He knew he could drive high. It was harder to do... but not more difficult. As in when he drove drunk, which he never did anymore, it was easy to drive, but more difficult. You didn't care so much whether you veered one way or were going too fast. Or you didn't care to check both ways before turning onto the street. Easy peasy. But it was difficult not to get into trouble.
High on the ganja every decision felt much more deliberate. You'd be calculating every minute detail of whether the incoming car's speed would warrant you to get onto the road. Stuff like that. but with each tough decision, you were able to somehow drive a safe route.
But who knew. There was once a time when
drunk driving
was tolerated. Maybe they would look at our era and call it the epoch when high driving was tolerated.
He sighed as he looked up from his screen and rubbed his eyes. Lunch was still 90 minutes away. These days got longer and longer. He'd been at that job now two years. Just enough time to not be the new guy anymore, but also not locked in. His roommate said if he didn't leave within 30 days he'd probably end up being stuck there at least five years. He thought about arguing that the roommate was already assuming that he wanted to leave, and then he didn't care to make that argument. Of course he wanted to leave. Had no clue where to go next, but he didn't want to be there.
In the first 30 days the job had felt kind of good. It was never an ethical job he thought, but at least he thought there was room for growth and all that bullshit. but by month six, he was pretty sure he was just in a ratpit, just like all the people he was watching on his monitor, only he wore a
white collar
so he could at least be somewhat proud of himself rather than feeling ashamed like his
surveillance
subjects.
Lunch. where would he go to lunch, he thought? Not a
McDonalds
that was for sure.