For a few months in my late teens, I worked the closing shift at Subway. It was an easy enough job. By around 8 pm, dinner rush would end and I could spend the rest of my shift cleaning, restocking, and baking bread for the next day. However, this night made me run out of the store and never come back in.
As I walked into the store, there were police cars , ambulances, and a crowd of people in front of the store next to us. It was also hard to ignore the giant hole in the brick wall in the front that was clearly made by an automobile in motion.
Immediately, my mid shift coworker ran up to me and whispered, “Jay! Did you hear about what happened earlier?”
“No, I just got here bruh”, I responded.
“Somebody floored their car into the Hobby Lobby next to us but they can’t find the driver”
“That’s really sad man. He was probably trying to kill himself.”
“Yeah, crazy shit. It sucks that he had to put other people at risk though.”
It went silent until a few customers walked towards the door to get in.
“Oh! lunch rush is about to start, we gotta go.”
For most of the time after that, work was business as usual. Weird things didn’t start happening until nighttime, after all of my other coworkers left of course.
After putting racks of bread dough into the oven at the back of the store, I got a tropical storm warning alert on my phone. Because it was Florida during summertime, I didn’t think much of it. I got those alerts nearly every night.
Since we were only 10 minutes to closing, I started to pack up all the ingredients, when I heard the oven beeping, signaling the bread was done. I heard the oven beeping.
I couldn’t even walk to the back for a second without a group of girls walking in. Of course. After turning off the oven, I sighed and walked towards the counter.
“Hey! Can I get 4 cookies and 4 cups of water please!” a short girl wearing dragon ball shirt and hat said.
I rolled my eyes and got her cookies when all of a sudden, our power went out.
“GOD DAMMIT!” I screamed.
The group of girls started laughing and left without paying.
Although I was never trained for this, I knew I had to hook the fridge and freezers up to a generator, so I looked around the store for it using the light from my phone’s flashlight.
Suddenly, I heard pounds coming from inside of the oven, along with shaking and banging of the racks.
“Wait! The Bread!”
Sprinting to the oven to turn it off, I saw the dough had exploded and gotten all over the oven’s interior.
I couldn’t deal with that at the time, I needed to get the fridges working as soon as possible so we wouldn’t have to throw everything away.
However, the pounding didn’t stop.
I immediately called my manager to ask what to do, when one large bang opened the oven’s door, making me jump.
I turned the flashlight toward the oven as I started to back away and my breathing became heavy.
I nearly fell backwards when I saw what looked like a hand made out of dough reach out of the
oven. I watched as the hand extended and what looked like one of those clay dolls stepped out.
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Right before my eyes, the dough person stood in front of me, emotionless.
As I stared in shock, the figure grew a slit that resembled a mouth as it smiled and said… “eat fresh”.
“Hello? Jay? Are you there?”, my manager said over the phone.
I felt paralyzed for a bit, but once it reached its hand out to me, I started running and never stopped.
I ran to my car in the pouring rain and got out of there as quickly as I could.
As I drove, I figured there’d be no possible way to explain this to my manager, with the cameras being off due to the power outage, so I just told them I had to go take care of an emergency at home because of the storm and that I couldn’t ever come back in.
I still don’t know exactly what happened that night, but I refuse to work closing shifts anywhere, and I no longer work in food service. After that, I don’t think I ever can again.