"

My name is Christopher John Paul Dulia Pepipo Worcestershire Wallace Gromit Stellan Skarsgård Frick, and I am the 38-time reigning Employee of the Month at The Huddle Mart in LaFortune Student Center, also known as LaFun to all you commoners. I work in The Huddle for 16 hours a day, seven days a week. During my grueling eight-hour break while the store is closed, I lurk around the area to ward off burglars and see if the cash register comes to life at night. During long periods without sleep, I occasionally hallucinate that it does, and my coworkers and I belt out a passionate duet about our love for The Huddle and each other. I sing falsetto, the cash register sings bass and occasionally plays the clarinet.

Winning Employee of the Month certainly isn’t easy. Everyone who works at The Huddle clearly has a lot of passion for their job, as indicated by their joyous frowns, which means that I have to go above and beyond each and every day. I find that customer satisfaction is the number one way to do this! As the classic saying goes, “The Employee’s Always Right,” which means I have to enforce my superior knowledge and wisdom upon everyone who steps foot in The Huddle to maximize their experience. Whenever I encourage customers, I know that I’m doing a great job because the customers are so focused on the store’s products that they can’t even make eye contact with me. Every time a customer takes an item off of the shelf, I involuntarily squeal with joy and sometimes even shed happy tears. If a customer puts an item back on the shelf, I begin to throw a tantrum as if I were a small child whose mom wouldn’t buy him Froot Loops. More often than not, they’ll end up buying the item just to get me to stop.

Of course, customer satisfaction isn’t the only thing that matters for winning Employee of the Month. I also do little things that set me apart from the rest of the competitive pack at The Huddle. My father once told me that The Huddle used to be a burger place, so every day I bring a burger into work and light it on fire in honor of The Huddle in the days of yore. This typically causes commotion amongst the other fools in LaFun, as well as amongst the fools at the fire department. I always give a big kiss to all of the unsold quarter dogs so they feel just as loved as the sold ones. In addition to being a cashier, shelf-stocker, promoter and arguably a store model, I’m also a security guard for this beautiful mart. One time, I caught an elderly man stealing an extra spoon from the utensil dispensers near the cash registers. Unfortunately for him, I’m a blue belt in karate, so I roundhouse kicked the area near him to scare him away. Ever since then, I carry around a taser in case of burglars, which I have luckily only had to use twice ... on myself. Accidentally.

Of course, spending all of my time in and around The Huddle can make the rest of my life at Notre Dame a bit challenging. I have no choice but to use all of my Flex Points in LaFun, as the store would likely be attacked by vandals and vagrants if I were to go to North Dining Hall. Unfortunately, I run out of Flex Points within three weeks every semester, so I have to resort to the ketchup packets at SmashBurger for sustenance. I smell awful. I haven’t showered in months. Sometimes I stand near the candy dispensers in The Huddle, hoping that the ravishing smell of sweet candy may rub off on me, usually to no avail. Every so often, some intoxicated students will come into The Huddle late at night, and I’ll feel the slightest bit of longing for their form of companionship. However, as soon as that happens, I always look across to the other cash register and see the beautiful face of my coworker Cleatus — who’s been playing a fun game with me for a few months now called “Silent Treatment” — and I’m reminded that I have companionship right here in The Huddle. Of course, if Cleatus ever wins an Employee of the Month award over me, I’ll slash his tires. Good luck getting to work on time without any tires, Cleatus.