On his hourly shelf inspection, Trader Joseph’s employee Michael Abrams found something odd. After searching 27 cans of Joe’s Os for parasites, disease, or anything else that could result in a class-action lawsuit, his 28th can yielded mold. Red, mushy mold. He rushed back to his superior, Jesamine Lucina Rosalyn Smythe. “Madame Smythe, you have to see this! It is really important!!” he said in his submissive retail worker voice.

“What is it, peasant?”

“I found a mold on the pasta, it was disgusting and made me feel abstract emotions.”

Without further hesitation, Jesamine gestured to her attendant, who proceeded to pull out a pistol and put Abrams down. His lifeless, unfulfilled body dropped to the floor, oozing several fluids of varying density. “We shall observe this mold.” The two went off.

After the 3 minute walk, they arrived at the canned goods section. After the attendant retrieved her looking glass, she observed the can of mold. “Miss, he was wrong. The ‘mold’ he spoke of was just the pasta sauce that it came with.”

“Oh.” 

The next day at 8 o’ clock, the Trader Joseph’s opened again. The aisle home to dry beans, wet beans, and canned goods was sparkling more than usual, and nothing was out of the ordinary. There were 108 cans of Joe’s Os on the shelves (which were also TJ’s brand), warmed gently by the patented Cherenkov light fixtures. Behind the scenes, the break room was a sight to behold, with the employees exiting their daily prayer. As always, Jesamine had led the prayer with the ferocity of a rabbit in heat: always multiplying, and the subject of many similes. Michael’s corpse was propped up near the corpse pile, adjacent to the “01 days since last employee mishap” sign. He was a man taken before his time, a man whose pockets were never lined. Nobody cared about him, least of all his fellow employees. They were too concerned with the men who complained about how hot the freezers were, or how cold the coffee bath was. The real enemy of Jesamine, and by extension Trader Joseph's, was human stupidity. The customers don’t know that freezers work by pumping out heat, or that hot coffee led to the downfall of McDonald’s. Even Michael Abrams didn’t know what spaghetti sauce was. Nevertheless, his fellow employees abided by the company motto, “Quid futuis, cur apud me es? Exi nunc.” and avoided the same mistakes as their counterpart.

At 1 o’ clock, there were 97 cans of Joe’s O on the shelves. The food court was packed from the lunch rush, with thousands of people of all shapes and sizes lining up for their meals. Ever since Trader Joseph's was given government funding, it had become an oasis of commerce that outshined even the famed “In-N-Out Burger” of the American Southwest. Everyone in a five mile radius was hoping to get the famous BLTJ (bacon, lettuce, tomato, and jerusalem artichoke) with a side of unleavened bread. This Trader Joseph’s in particular had become famous for a combination of Barq’s root beer and coffee creamer, a concoction known as Coffee Beer by the locals. At 1:30, the bell rang and all the diners stood up to sing the pledge of allegiance. Singing it in schools had fallen out of favor after the war, but Jesamine found it to improve morale. After all, the people making food for the troops should be filled with the spirit of free America!

At 3 ‘ clock, the personal shoppers in service of the irradiated and bedridden 1% were interrupted by a mild to moderate ruckus in the southeast section: vegetarian and gluten-free options. Jesamine was taking her afternoon nap of approximately 47.5 winks, but her attendant was wide awake, fully prepared to cause grievous bodily harm to anyone that interrupted her liege. She heard the noise, however, and decided it could perhaps be important. She crept into Jesamine’s room using the password, RudyXD69. Even though she made frequent visits in the night, the room never ceased to amaze her. The wallpaper was complex without being tacky, and it paired excellently with the decorations. There was a colonial era theme, with several paintings of former US presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Rutherford Birchard Hayes (her personal favorite). Jesamine herself slept on a bed of peacock feathers, with the bedspread patterned to look like the redesigned American flag. She was stirring in her sleep, although it could have been from the dreams rather than the explosion. 

“Miss, wake up. I think there was an incident.” Jesamine slowly rose up, bending only at the waist, in the fashion of a vampire. She appeared as if she was never asleep in the first place.

“Ah, the horse must have gotten in. Or was that a dream I had…it gets hard to tell these days.” The attendant just stood there with a dearth of bewilderment; she had become used to these kinds of conversations. She resolved to just walk out of the room, expecting Jesamine to follow her. She did.

The journey was quick, as the only aisle separating them was filled with pallets upon pallets of mayonnaise. The scene they came across was quite demented, dubious, and/or droll. A large man wearing jodhpurs and a pleather jacket lay tied up with expired red vines. Around him were two employees and three customers. The customers were clearly spooked, but Jesamine’s loyal workers were trained to handle anything from an intelligent hamster to an unintelligent hamster. Jesamine was not new to intruders; just last week a swarm of shrimp found its way into the fountain. It took hours to stop them from leaping out and attacking customers’ eyes. Jesamine was wondering not how, but why such a man would come here. She said, “I wonder not how, but why you would come here.” He stayed as quiet as a corpse. She leaned in closer to deliver her monologue. “Any one of my enemies could have sent you, as I have made many in my life. What sets me apart from every other manager is that I have passion in what I do. I have faith in myself. Even though my employees range from idiotic to barbaric, I have faith in them. You have nothing in your life. Even as you sit here in my store, tied up with edible BDSM gear, you are not the cornered predator. You do not have nothing left to lose. You never had anything in the first place.” As she backed away, her staff knew what to do. They picked him up and carried him away, and by tomorrow he’d be on the corpse pile. On the walk back, Jesamine’s attendant spoke up.

“Miss, that man back there, I think he was dead before we got there. He wasn’t breathing or struggling when they took him.”

Knowingly, Jesamine responded, “Of course he was dear.”

“But I thought-”

“Don’t think. Thinkers don’t last very long.”