CHEYENNE, Wyo. — After submitting an impressive resume, new resident Cora Bailee was hired immediately as general manager of the local Dairy Queen. Her excitement died upon the discovery of former employees’ audio logs.
“My first day, I came in and no one’s here. The Director of Operations who was supposed to train me said she had an emergency and couldn’t come in. When no other workers came in, I checked my email just to find that no one else worked here either,” said Bailee. “Another email just said where to find the code to unlock the register, which only had one half of the key to the break room.”
While previously family-owned, the 40 year old Dairy Queen franchise was purchased several years ago by the mysterious EnE Foods Inc., a company with no information on the internet nor city records. The only information to be learned is on various sticky notes, past email exchanges on an aging computer, and various tape recorders hidden around the site.
“Corporate said if we put in overtime every week last month, they’d reward us with a pizza party and gift cards,” a voice on one tape cassette states. “They gave us two pizzas for 15 employees. And the $10 gift cards were for Dairy Queen.”
Bailee reports black mold, kitchen drains flooded with sewage water, insects in the soda fountain, voices whispering in the walk-in, and a moving block puzzle in the bathroom. To find more clues she has to pause work in order to listen to more tapes for some reason. She also noted how strangely articulate some of the tape recordings are.
“Corporate limits what the store can order on its stock trucks which leads to the public being upset at the workers rather than the company. We’ve had it up to here with the poor working conditions, the way our requests have been ignored, the expected overtime. If EnE Foods Inc. doesn’t want to communicate, then consider our relationship null and void. Tonight we exit, in solidarity,” a voice that sounded like Nolan North stated without stuttering or repeating itself. “Boss, we, the employees of the Cheyenne Dairy Queen will no longer accept these working conditions and hereby- oh, oh my god. No! Stop! Why-” The recording ends in screams, laser blasters firing, and swords clinking.
After discovering 15 different tape recorders in the 2000-square-foot dilapidated fast food restaurant and being forced to work 80-hour weeks, Bailee still holds on to her position at Dairy Queen, in hopes of a promotion.
