Chicken I’m taking inventory in the walk-in freezer, have my hat and gloves on and am counting packages of sandwich buns, when one of my employees barrels through the door to tell me Mr. Chicken is back. She shivers in her green Golden Lotus blouse, grabs my elbow, drags me from the freezer. “I can’t very well do much about him,” I say, taking off my hat. “But he scares us,” she says. “You’re the manager. Manage him.” By the time she and I reach the front counter, Mr. Chicken already has his first box of chicken bits in hand and is waddling back to a table to start eating. I don’t know who first started calling him Mr. Chicken. Probably one of the high school boys who works the fryers. Mr. Chicken is maybe fifty years old, balding, has salt and pepper hair, wears a white shirt and dark pants and a tie. He weighs about five hundred pounds and his stomach avalanches over his waistband like the extra is going to drop off at any moment.
