THE MOMENT
"Welcome to McDonald's, may I take your order?" The gruff, gravelly voice that came through the speaker wasn't what Jim expected. It sounded vaguely familiar; but, he was on the spot and didn't have time to think about it.
"Uhh... Barry sent me??" Jim namedropped his friend as casually as he could, considering he didn't plan to have to do it at all. It was early evening, late afternoon; the lull between the lunch and dinner rush. Barry was supposed to be manning the window and the unexpected voice took him by surprise.
"Jim?" The voice replied quickly and he was finally able to recognize it.
"Barry?" Jim asked. "Yeah, it's me; hook me up."
"You got it man, drive to the window," Barry replied with a low, rumbling chuckle. Jim drove forward. When he pulled up to the window, he was thoroughly surprised again. A tall, orange fox man with an eye patch and scar visible beneath it on his left eye leaned out the window with a toothy grin. He wore the usual McDonald's uniform and his nametag read: Barry
"What the hell is going on?" Jim asked as Barry handed him a bag of food. "How are you not in trouble working in that form?"
"Not just me," Barry the fox man moved to the side so that Jim could see into the store. All the other employees behind the counter were foxes too. "It's crazy, Sharp Development's running a promotion with us and they worked it out so we could use our AlterNet characters while working. One of our cooks is a chef in-game and he's even getting XP while working," he chuckled.
"Everyone already made a fox?" Jim asked. Out of everything, that was the hardest thing for him to believe. He had his own AlterNet character and quested with Barry often. The one-eyed fox shook his head.
"McDonald's still wanted some sense of unity for the workers; each store had to pick the same race. Since I already had a character everyone else had to be Woofclan."
"Oh man, that's kind of a rough thing to force on your employees...," Jim shook his head.
"I thought so too; but, it's not too bad," Barry nodded. "Everyone gets a reset with the patch coming up anyway; so it's only for a couple of weeks."
"Oh yeah..," Jim nodded. "I keep forgetting about that, I'm not sure I want to change anything. But, that's pretty cool! I wish I could log in to work my job," he said.
"Honestly, I feel like McDonald's made a mistake," Barry shrugged.
"What? Why?" As Jim asked his question, a stranger dashed out of the restaurant and across the drive-thru lane. He was screaming wildly with his hands flailing in the air as he ran.
"Eh, that," Barry chuckled. "They really didn't advertise it as much as they should have."