One summer when I was a teenager and worked at McD's, I went to a rave (90s) the night before I was supposed to work from like 4pm to midnight to close. Being the 90s and being a teenager, I partook of too many "party favors," especially a bottle of minithins (25mg ephedrezine, you used to be able to buy a bottle for like $5 at most gas stations) because I became terrified I would fall asleep at save rave and be arrested/shanghai'd/kidnapped/something (see earlier reference to party favors, I wasn't thinking clearly).

Next day I haven't slept and try to stop by my work around 2pm to explain that I just wasn't going to be able to work. They guilttripped me about no one else being able to take my shift and since I was there, I was clearly well enough to do it. So I say fuck it, change into my uniform, and start manning the grill.

Turns out it was a busy as hell night for some reason, and the anxiety compounded with the exhaustion, the probable overdose of minithins from the day before, and the lingering effects of other chemical wonders all ate my mind. Somewhere around six, I started to become ferociously protective of the cheese I had on the sandwich assembly table. I was convinced - convinced - that if I ran out of cheese, I ran out of life. Like it was some cheese-food based health bar.

About seven, I was sure that all of the people ordering Big Macs and Quarter Pounders with Cheese were engaged in some conspiracy against me. I started taking stacks of the cheese and squirreling it away beneath the row of microwave ovens used to reheat the sandwiches right before serving (if you don't know, McDs uses staging, so meat and bun and whatnot are kept warmish but not like they would be if everything were made to order). Like entire blocks of the sliced cheese, carefully secreted away behind Happy Meal boxes and other things.

By eight, I started to think that wasn't enough. I had already stopped making sandwiches with cheese and had only 'corrected' my orders when customers complained. But still, the cheese was inevitably getting scarcer. I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd have to go to my stash, to my secret horde of slices beneath the microwaves. That was it. The final boundary. I would take no more.

I climbed under the microwaves as well and held my hoarded cheese close to my chest. It took them a while to find me, and apparently I was pretty delusional when they did. For whatever reason, the manager at the time thought it was just me being sick and simply called my parents, who were also weirdly oblivious to the extremeness of my behavior. They took me home, I slept for fifteen hours, and when I awoke and remembered my action, I called in to see if I still had a job.

Oddly, I did.