Ken, back at the restaurant full time - his town job, the dive pub run by the Village Idiot and his wife, didn't work out.
I'd worked there a couple of years ago. They were without a doubt the Village Idiots. When someone looks like they're the village idiot, talks like the village idiot, acts like the village idiot and then shows you they're the village idiots it's a pretty safe guess to say they're the village idiots.
They've a bit of a reputation, but in a town where no one wants to speak ill of anybody else you have to read between the lines. They'd lobbied to get the the spouses of Selkirk College students work permits - ostensibly so they could have a lower paid employee pool. Poor Ken was a victim of that, the "Browning" of the kitchen, a certain nationality working minimum wage jobs at 7-11 and Pizza Hut (and driving Cadillacs and Mercedes...) had taken over and didn't want Ken there anymore.
This is funny. They said that Ken is too slow.
And - you know, he is slow - but - go into any of the minimum wage jobs they've taken over and find one working passably hard - I dare you - double dare you. The 7-11, you'll find one person ahead of you in line, an 7-11 employee just off shift, and you'll wait 10 minutes for service.
Anyways, the Village Idiots gave him they're condolences and let him go. "Wasn't their problem..." the owners said. For a locally focused business they have surprisingly few locals working for them.
They're the kind of people that complain that nobody wants to work, when in fact nobody wanted to work for them, at the wages they pay and the hours and conditions they offered...they took the Covid relief from the government and used it to build a 3 story patio that if either the owner or her husband had to run up and down it 3 times they'd be dead of a heart attack.
They have political ambitions, and while easy to refute - the sort of Alberta Conservatives that believe that speaking louder than their opponent wins the argument - they're a pretty toxic bunch.
Back to Ken.
As we've a whole new contingent of under-aged child staff this year, pretty 14 year old girls and such, certain of my topics about Ken will have to remain off limits.
It kills me.
So I've renamed him "Mister Tickles" and introduced him to the young girls.
They're young but they're not stupid and they get the implicit caution, and I'm free to elaborate with the aid of certain therapy puppets I've acquired...skits performed for the benefit of those staff sitting at the bar to eat their staff meal:
"Mister Tickles You can untie me now...noooo, Mister Tickles I have to go home...Mister Tickles that hurts...."
While on that bent I've taken the liberty of elaborating upon Sean: "I thought I heard Curtis still screaming in your basement..." and Ankush- a likeable & harmless (albeit Useless) kitchen Helper hired under the same "Selkirk College" umbrella, chosen specifically because the owner liked the fact that he was taking women's studies "The Butcher of Bengal...He took women's studies!!! WOMEN'S STUDIES!!!"...
And suggesting to Ken that we take the 2 kitchen helpers to DQ on a double date, Ken's denials that he ever goes to DQ somehow implausible given his appearance, his laughing "Shhhhh's" aren't fooling me...Ken's arguments they're "too young" is irrelevant, they're saved from him not by his better judgement but by his own bumbling incompetence, the inept aspiring pedophile...