With my illegally purchased Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) in hand, I was instantly plucked out of a line of 500 mostly white applicants lined up around the corner for a service job at a downtown Toronto Tim Hortons. Posing as an international student pursuing an MBA at the Brampton Academy of Arts and Letters and Numbers, who was looking for full time work, I was the stereotypically perfect candidate.
My new boss, Raj Singh took an instant liking to me when I lied to him about also being from Punjab and of the same caste. He helpfully suggested a ‘vegetarian only’ housing unit in the suburb of Scarborough, that I could bunk in when not working. He described the lodgings (which were coincidentally owned by his brother) as a roomy three-bedroom basement student loft. Shared with only 18 people and just $1100 a month. It was a steal, he told me.
Always got time for Raj Hortons
First off, to our international readers: Tim Hortons is a famous Canadian coffee and donut restaurant. Think Dunkin Donuts meets the Russian Tea Room. For many years it was a friendly, homestyle ma and pa joint for Canadians of all walks of life to meet, drink coffee, and spend time when they weren’t working at the maple syrup factory. However, in the past few years, the woke Liberal government has replaced all the hard-working Canadians with the cheap labor of so-called international students. Customers have seen the steady decline of this national treasure into a third-rate, third-world homeless shelter thanks to ‘Timmigration.’
Raj demanded very little from his employees. In fact, he often encouraged us to do nothing, which is exactly what he did. Raj owned a few Tim Horton locations, plus a Pork Express/Halal Pizza joint at an ONroute along the 400 highway. He also rented out his electric bike to Uber Eats drivers. Raj would often brag to the employees that he came to Canada with nothing, but was quickly given everything from the Canadian government. “Pretty much after I stepped off the plane, Yonny.” And to further quote my new boss: “I support Trudeau!”
Timbit of trouble
The thing you should know is that English is only spoken to the customers in Tim Hortons. Although my Hindu is a bit rusty, I noted that the staff typically nickname each customer: Chubby Pinky (overweight white person), Night Thief (any black customer), and Weenie Wang (for Asian men). In my experience, Asian women never appeared inside a Tim Hortons.
While it turned out to indeed be true that Chubby Pinky would eat anything, this seems to have had more to do with the fact that we rarely had half the items listed on the menu. When we ran out of any ingredients or items we were told to substitute and push out the order anyway. I once substituted a Nutella Ice Cap and everything bagel with a diet Ice Tea and vegetarian chili. The logic, according to Samdeep, one of my co-workers, was that “overly polite Canadians rarely complain.” My fellow brown shirt continued, “You could totally take a dump on the ground in front of a white man and they won’t say anything. Canada is amazing, eh?”
One particularly gnarly morning, I arrived at work to find fruit flies, gnats and wasps on the donuts. As I proactively started to place the contaminated sugar cakes into a garbage bag, Sandeep stopped me.
“Chubby Pinky will eat anything,” he laughed. “They are like pigs at the trough.” Then he made a grunting noise, walked to the kitchen to lay down on the old baker’s table beside five other young men. This was presumably a hygienic place to lie down shirtless, as baking is no longer done at Tim Hortons. All food is shipped frozen, to be reheated in microwaves or pots of hot water.
I must admit, as a Canadian, it was hard for me to witness how little the workers cared for our national treasure (named in honor of hockey legend and dead drunk driver Tim Horton—ed).
Never got time for sanitation
I could feel that my undercover assignment was in danger of being exposed, as I never seemed to really fit in at the restaurant. I was reprimanded for everything from taking out the trash, to using clean water to mop, wiping down tables after customers left, and even for scrubbing down the food service station from dead insects and mouse droppings.
How could I resist? I needed to save this national treasure from a global embarrassment, which is what it has become.
Sandeep, who I soon befriended after he took me for a few rides around the parking lot on his electric scooter, warned me that I was making too many waves with my can-do attitude.
“Bro, this job pays garbage. Just bide your time till you get your PR and finish your degree.” Sandeep had delayed his studies at University University, located in a nearby stripmall. He told me that he was doing so to support his entire family of 15 in India. With his permanent residency secured he would be able to bring them all to Canada to live with him and his 9 roommates. “All of these jobs, bro, food worker, security guard, Uber Eat bicycle man, they are just means to an end. But sometimes I do wonder if I’m playing the system or the system is playing me.”
Double Double Trouble
Not long after hearing Sandeep’s side of the story, Raj called me into his office, which doubled as a broken toilet stall.
“Yonny,” he growled, “stop being so good at your job.”
I looked at the graffiti behind his bald head: Free Money, Come to Canada. I stood there in silence. I didn’t know what had happened. Where were the Canadian heroes who once graced the hallowed halls of this fine brewed institution: Walt Gretzky, Terry Fox, Sidney Crosby, Lester B. Pearson? Did their service and sacrifice mean nothing to these foreign invaders?
The only white people left in their place were our regulars: homeless men and women, lunatics who used the non-existent free wifi, and desperate, broke old stock Canadians looking for a piece of their childhood, which had been long removed by the corrupt Liberal party.
“I can’t help myself,” I sobbed through teary eyes, the stench of unflushed toilets wafting into my nostrils.
“You’re making us look bad,” he said. “Now go take a break.”
After a short nap on the baker’s table, I went back to the drive-thru window where I witnessed the staff mix up order after order. I’ve been embedded in the Gaza university occupation warcamps, posed as a gender-affirming surgeon in Tavistock, England, and even successfully applied for MAID by faking Long COVID, but nothing could prepare me for the horror of working in this disgraceful Canadian food institution!
Rolling Up the Rim of Truth
Timmies receives generous amounts of Liberal funding to employ these international students. While their path to Canada is certainly suspect these 30-year-old kids have no ill intentions. They just want a better future for themselves and their 58 closest relatives. They come in search of big dreams, but basically get stuck in the service industry for years as corporate slaves.
Most would call the whole thing a sugary kick back. A corrupt system that has led this Canadian institution, dreamt up by an alcoholic hockey legend, to become a coffee-flavored cesspool. The food is poorly prepared and dirty. The employees don’t take any pride in their work, and more and more the once proud business is being grinded into the ground.
The following week, Raj informed me that there was a “problem” with my LMIA. He would have to let me go. It seems that my paperwork was actually somehow legitimate and he would have nothing to do with it. He said that he could give me a reference for Uber, but that I wasn’t welcome back in his donut shop.
“One day,” he said, “you will spread and fly like the moth in the supply room and open your own Tim Hortons, Yonny.”
I handed in my brown shirt and hat, stepped over a homeless man, and exited out the back door, vowing to warn all Canadians about another Canadian institution destroyed by the Liberal government.
