‘Beantown: Trial By Fire’ Is A Twisted Comic Take On The Minimum-Wage Service Industry

Mike Manor’s Beantown: Trial by Fire, a new short created for Adult Swim’s Smalls initiative, explores the horrors of the service industry.

With the aesthetic of a blurry 8-bit video game world, this twisted comic take follows two workers locked in a brutal competition to serve customers — until one of them drops dead. The reward? A glorious minimum wage salary. The loser? Well, they die. Anyone who’s ever worked in fast food will find it painfully relatable. If you haven’t, you might want to watch this before accepting that job offer.

Manor’s pixel art design perfectly captures the manic chaos of fast food work — a relentless battle to survive the barrage of absurd customer demands, all for an unlivable wage.

Mike Manor is a commercial animator/director based in Los Angeles. He created the web series Super I.T. Squad for Comedy Central and has directed music videos for Reggie Watts, Denzel Curry, Flying Lotus, Pi’erre Bourne, and 24kGolden, among others.