I Booked A Good Burger Experience And They Put Me To Work

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It’s Fuck Good Burger Week here at Kill Pretty, and all of our writers and editors are dedicating their energy to reminding you how bad Good Burger was. We thought about calling it “Bad Burger Week,” but that’s just as bad as the actual nostalgia surrounding Good Burger. Think about it, would you pay $30 for a Good Burger experience? Do you need your picture taken in front of a bad mock up of the All That logo? No way! You need to give that money to us.

I show my phone screen to the burly guy in the Good Burger branded polo standing outside the nondescript restaurant that’s now home to the Good Burger experience. It costs $30 and the reservations filled up long before I was able to get in. As soon as I show my proof of purchase someone pulls me aside. It’s Jacque, my manager for the next 90 minutes. He puts a paper hat on my head and pushes me towards the fry basket. “Welcome to Good Burger, dunk the tates.” I tell him that I’m here for the Good Burger experience, that I paid $30 to have my photo taken in front of a milkshake machine and to eat the most expensive burger in LA. Jacque takes a drag from his cigarette and says, “Every experience is different.”

45 minutes into my shift dunking potatoes into scalding oil Kel, Mr. Good Burger himself, walks through the kitchen. He has a stop watch in his hand and he’s using it to time someone on the grill. Another chump who paid for the experience. I don’t know how long they’re supposed to be spending with the burgers, but it’s longer than Kel wants. He rips off the fry cook’s paper hat and shoves in their mouth. He times them as they chew it up and swallow it down. While sob on the floor he signs a Good Burger Blu-Ray and drops it to the ground. Am I just like the bawling wreck on the floor clinging to his nostalgia over a poorly written, filmed, and performed piece of Nickelodeon content? I’m a sucker. They’re a sucker. We’re all suckers.

An electric shock is delivered to my neck and I fall to ground, seizing and foaming at the mouth. I don’t black out until my head cracks against the tile, hot fries scatter across the ground and a few stray crumbs fall into my mouth. They aren’t bad. When I wake up my Instagram is filled with likes. There are photos of me surfing the orange soda wave as the guy in the Good Burger polo stands out of frame, holding my arms out like a scarecrow. My pockets are filled with All That branded ketchup packets, they’ve busted in my sleep and covered my bed in a thick red paste. I try to book another Good Burger experience just to figure out what happened but the dates have been blacked out. In two weeks the grills have to be removed to make way for the Boy Meets World tree house experience, and two weeks after that the tree house will be struck to make room for The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo internship experience. I suppose I should book my tickets now.

You can follow Jacob Shelton on Twitter and Instagram or read more of his work in Mindfuck or in like every issue of Kill Pretty.