Burgers From Beyond the Stars

Chapter 1

CONTENT WARNING: CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT AND VARIOUS FETISHES, PLEASE SEE DESCRIPTION FOR DETAILS. DON'T LIKE IT DON'T READ IT.



From: Scarter@pip.com

To: All Employees

Date: 12/10/2024

Subject: Share Your Story!



Hi Team!,



As we reach the end of the year, it is naturally a time to look back and celebrate all that we have accomplished over these past few months. When Olivia founded this company, she had big aspirations for the impact we would have on the world, some would have said too big, so it means so much to her to be surrounded by like minded people who share her vision of the future. As you all know, Olivia is a woman of tremendous vision and ambition, so I feel it would be a little intellectually dishonest of me to say we would have never gotten here without you, but don’t let that diminish what you do! Without your commitment and caring the road to success would be far lonelier and far less fun! Each of you brings something unique to our little family, each of us has our own story, and as we move through this time of reflection, that is what we’d like to focus on. Your stories. We hope that you will join us in sharing your reflections and reminiscences of the journey that led you here, and that you take further inspiration from what your friends and colleagues share.

Of course we know that it can be a little embarrassing to put yourself out there like this, so our dearest boss has seen to it to volunteer me, her poor assistant, to initiate this season of stories by sharing my own. Now, this is a bit embarrassing for me, as many of you know I am a bit of a private person, but Olivia has insisted that I start. She wants your stories to be from the heart, and not weighed down by the normal niceties and formalities of office culture. We know this is a little awkward and unorthodox, and maybe even a little scary, but then again, doesn’t that just perfectly describe everything Olivia?

Anyway, I suppose because I may have the closest, and most intimate working relationship with our beloved boss, she believes that I am the best person to set the tone for this team building exercise. This is about opening up to each other as colleagues, and building real connections, so please don’t let the tone of this email fool you, you can leave the formalities at the door. We want your honest uncensored truth! Be creative! This is your chance to flex those creative muscles and really show the team what you are capable of beyond any metric or report! But I hope if nothing else, we will see some of ourselves in each other’s stories, and they will bring our PiP family even closer.

Please submit your PiP Journey to the dedicated inbox, successstories@pipinc.com.

Participation is Mandatory.

Do not disappoint her.



Sincerely,

Samantha Carter

Executive Assistant to Olivia H. (CEO, CFO, COO)

PiP Inc.

616 Office Park Drive, Suite 202

Fulton Springs, MD 21505





Contents of Attachment "MyStory.docx"



My Name is Samantha Carter and this is my PiP Journey. My story actually begins not with PiP, but at the charter location of what would become its first subsidiary. Before Bessie’s Burger Bistro was the fastest growing fast casual chain in America, it was a struggling small business (just called Bessie’s) deep in the heart of Western MD.

Now for those of you who’ve had the displeasure of hearing me speak in my dreadful Maine accent you may be wondering how I wound up at a greasy spoon north of Deep Creek Lake. The short answer is college. The longer answer is that I was a very bookish nerdy little girl who got labeled as “gifted” by some pesky child psychologist, skipped a few grades, and was pushed into every social clout killing extracurricular and advanced academic activity you can imagine. My parents were too thrilled at the prospect of someone in our family potentially having a career that wasn’t “Fisherman” or “Fisherman’s Wife” for the first time in three centuries to consider that there may be consequences to giving your child a chronic case of homework brain. I wasn’t a complete outcast or anything, I had a few good equally dweeby friends, but needless to say my social skills were lackluster at best.

I got into college easily enough, had no trouble with the gen ed classes, and even managed to get a little more “wordly” by all the usual means, drinking, drugs, discovering my sexuality, etc. That was all great. What I did not discover was what I wanted to do with my life, so I had a minor panic attack when it came time to pick a major. Eventually I just settled on the same thing every girl without a plan picks, Communications.

That took care of the rest of college, and sure, it’s a flexible enough degree. But I still had no idea what I wanted to do with it. I was still extremely naive, and I was still recovering from the effects of being told how special and perfect I was for the first 18 years of my life, so there was a part of me that still kind of thought that as I walked off the graduation stage, someone would be there just waiting to hand me my big girl job.

Of course that’s not how it happened. I mean some magic person just coming into your life, taking control and altering the course you are on? No one’s just going to happen to be working on some sort of grand cosmic puzzle that’s missing a piece and pick you up off the street and alter every fiber of your being so that you perfectly fit. That just doesn’t happen.

But taking a year after school to see the world a bit and find yourself? That happens right? Would it be so terrible if I relaxed for a little bit, spent a little time out there in the real world “roughing it” and actually took the time to figure out my next step instead of just stressing about it?

So it was decided, my parents weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea but they hadn’t made a habit of telling me “no” and didn’t seem interested in starting now, and even sent me a little money from their savings to get myself settled. Turns out the spirit of exploration took me about 50 miles away from my college campus. Reliable as my Toyota Tercel may have been, I hardly trusted her to make a cross country journey, and no one ever accused me of having the spirit of adventure.

I found Fulton Springs via a little brochure for its historic mine tour that was pinned on a bulletin board in a gas station. Back then it was just a tiny dead coal town. The place looked “real” enough, and I had a soft spot for little history based tourist traps. My dad loved a historic village, and it was a passion I had grown to share with him. So that settled that.

I managed to find a listing for a cheap apartment for rent right in the center of town. It was a dump, which should have been obvious from how eager they were to lease it to me over the phone, but like I said, I’m not the street kind of smart. It was mine at least, and soon enough I was following the moving truck my parents so graciously rented on my behalf into the next chapter of my life.

It was near the end of that first drive that I first saw Bessie’s. It was a long rectangular building with mostly glass walls that met in chipped mint-green stone column corners. The roof sloped up at an angle with each letter of the place’s namesake displayed in its own little diamond panel, A fading black block letter still bold against it’s sunwashed pastel background. Larger iron diamonds were planted into cracked concrete blocking in what appeared to be a long abandoned patio. A fiberglass cow by the entrance stood upright, winking at potential customers as she held a double decker burger. The parking lot was a kaleidoscope of cracked blacktop, protruding grass, and potholes hastily filled with loose gravel.

I was in love. I had developed an infatuation with Googie Architecture as a little girl (I told you I was a dweeb) and though even at its prime this place would have been more of an imitation of that style than the genuine article, I still thought it was the perfect little slice of decaying Americana for me to experience while I found myself over the next few months.

I tried not to get too excited at first, the place looked empty. I thought it may have been long since closed, the interior lights just left on to discourage vandals, but when I returned to the parking lot the next day, I saw movement behind the counter and giddily ran inside.

The girl behind the counter giggled when I asked if they were hiring, and I was suddenly aware of how ridiculous I must have looked breathlessly asking for a job application with a big goofy smile on my face. It didn’t help that this girl was the spitting image of every blonde bully that snickered at me when I’d raise my hand a little too eagerly at school. Before I could die of embarrassment however her smile warmed and she assured me that she would get the owner.

A moment later the girl returned with Rebekah in tow, who motioned for me to follow her back to her office. Whatever lingering pangs of panic I felt dissipated as I watched Rebekah's silly little half jog, half sashay back to her office, and saw how every time she looked back at me to make sure I was still following she seemed to constantly be adjusting her mouth, like she couldn’t seem to decide exactly how to smile at me. She was a kindred spirit for sure. Job or not, I was in the presence of another unwilling acolyte of awkwardness.

It also didn’t hurt that she was absolutely stunning. She had long, thick wavy brown hair that was pulled up into a messy bun that up until we sat had been tucked away under a black ball cap. She had naturally sunkissed skin, big hazel eyes that sat above a button nose adorned with a generous helping of dark brown freckles. Her lips were pouty and full, and accentuated her naturally round face that in turn only seemed to benefit from her body's overall plushness. Chubby cheeks and the slightest inkling of a double chin giving her a youthful fullness that disguised her 45 years by at least a decade.

Below this she had the sort of overly-exaggerated hourglass figure I thought only existed in my Mom’s plus size catalogs. A generous bust and an adorable little paunch seemed to be fighting a constant battle against her slightly too small blouse’s buttons, and her equally bountiful hips and backside seemed to be engaged in a similar war with a pair of threadbare dress slacks.

I began to picture her as a headmistress in an all girls school, and silly me, I had forgotten my assignment and was going to need to be punished. Then I reminded myself that I did really need a job, so perhaps it would be for the best if I stopped trying to leave a puddle on the office chair and pay attention to the milfy manager. So raging hormones back in check, Rebekah explained that between her, and the girl I had met on the way in, that had already met ⅔ of the staff. Bessie’s was only open Thursday thru Saturday these days, and the three of them worked 12 hour shifts each day 7 am to 7 pm. The first and last hour were for opening and closing procedures. She said the place had become “sort of a tourist trap, but for locals” meaning it pretty much entirely relied on an aging population that drove by and had a wistful memory of the place in it’s prime, so the limited hours helped keep costs down and nostalgia up. The pay wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be insulting either, and the work would be easy.

I guess after she said all this out loud she felt a pang of self-consciousness, because she shrugged and added that if I took the job, she was hoping she might finally be able to spend time doing “manager stuff” instead of just helping out front, and could figure out a way to turn things around and get some new people in the door who weren’t just vacationers lost on their way to Deep Creek Lake looking for a restroom.

I agreed of course, which earned me another one of her shifting smiles, and she took me back out to meet the other two members of the team. The girl who had greeted me initially was Riley. Bleached, blue eyed, tall, and toned, and perpetually looking like she just stepped off of a professional modelling shoot.

Everything she wore that wasn’t the company issued gray polo and black slacks was pink. White sneakers with pink laces, pink socks, pink nail polish, pink lipstick, a pink claw clip that somehow managed to keep her tailbone length hair contained under her pink ball cap,even a pink fanny pack around her waist. I don’t think she even ever kept anything in it, it was just another bit of pink that she figured out she could add to her ensemble. When we weren’t at work, she dressed very much the same. The highest fashion our salary allowed, assuming it came in neon pink. She looked like a relic of the early 2000s, Simple Life-Chic, and I was always too afraid of potentially hurting her feelings to pry and try to figure out if she was slightly ahead of the curb on Y2K revival fashion, or just a fashion eccentric that hit the zeitgeist lottery.

She spoke in a very obviously fake valley girl accent. Her real voice was a light southern draw and it would come out every now and then, until she caught herself mid-ya’ll. Which would always make her face blush beet red. It was very cute. Besides, I couldn’t exactly give her grief for hating her accent, I can’t remember the last day I didn’t curse my parents for not letting me rot my accent away with mass media consumption and cursing me with this Lobsterman lilt.

Then there was Amira, who was then just emerging from the kitchen. She was short, and much thicker, but unlike our plush boss her curvature came from pure strength. A former athlete, she had adopted a far more sedentary lifestyle since graduation, but all this change had done was cover her thick musculature with a thin layer of femininity. She had no such qualms about her accent, and gave me a hearty hello and a big wave.

She was the daughter of two first generation immigrants, a Lebanese-Mexican father and Korean mother. She had inherited a unique mixture of both of their accents, and while we never really discussed it, I always got the impression that its individuality was not exactly appreciated by her childhood peers, but unlike Riley and I, she just used that as fuel to build herself up. Amira radiated an aura of confidence that seemed absolutely impenetrable, That was what was so enchanting about her.

Amira’s sense of fashion, or lack thereof according to Riley, consisted of 7 different baggy tye-dye t-shirts, 7 sets of gym shorts, 6 pairs of flip flops and one pair of sneakers. She would leave her curly black hair in whatever state it was in when she woke up in the morning, and she constantly smelled of Blue Raspberry weed vape, but you would hardly notice. Effortlessly beautiful is such a cliched phrase, but I don’t know how else to describe her. Emphasis on the lack of effort.

With introductions out of the way, a uniform pulled from the back room, and a few papers signed, I was officially part of Bessie's crew. As I chatted up the girls, I discovered that Riley and Amira were already best friends despite their radical difference in aesthetic, a pairing born mostly out of necessity, as the two of them were by far the “weirdest” girls in our age group prior to my arrival. I was just as different from them as they were from each other, but it didn’t matter. Amira would listen intently to Riley wondering out loud if she should switch toners, Riley would listen to me gush about whatever horny elf book I was currently obsessing over and we would both nod in agreement when Amira complained about whatever limited edition chip she loved that had just been discontinued.

I don’t want to paint the poor old model of Fulton Springs in too harsh a light, it’s not that it was full of extras from a hillbilly horror movie or anything, I loved my adopted town, and I think the girls did too, but it wasn’t exactly brimming with opportunities for people to expand their cultural horizons. So if you weren’t at least a sort of redneck-lite, the townsfolk just didn’t really know how to relate to you. Nice enough, sure, but always a distance between us and them. Not so much anymore. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

So life continued on like that for quite longer than planned. Rebekah had been honest about the whole decent pay thing, and had undersold how easy the workload would be, so between the complete lack of stress, and having two amazing friends it was incredibly easy for my gap year to become an indefinite hiatus.

There was a time I think, shortly before everything changed, that this little nagging voice appeared in the back of my brain, reminding me that this endless summer couldn’t last forever. I think maybe I was even starting to have ideas about what my next steps would be but for the moment I was content with seeing where the road would take me.

Said road would eventually lead to that first Thursday two Novembers back. Riley, Amira & I shuffled in at seven to start prepping for the day and Rebekah came in about an hour later, looking like she did every day, a mix of managerial and manic, fumbling to stuff keys back into her over-sized purse, her slightly too small button up already adorned with the usual mix of latte stains and crumbs. She smiled at us, frantically waving and mouthing “hi!” as she hurried back to her office to do whatever it was she did for the first few hours of the day before she would appear on the floor to help with the lunch “rush” that usually consisted of them serving 20 customers that hour instead of 10.