CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
The green beast rose up over the Big Mac counter, was partially hidden by the hamburger grill and was situated just north of the french fry machine. Made of plywood, painted pea green and looking like it was built in someone’s garage it had a heat source and a large round griddle that rotated into the bowels of the massive machine. Mickey, our manager, explained that it was meant to remove any guesswork when making the new pancake breakfast. We were to pour the batter onto the griddle and stand back. The griddle would slowly rotate taking the pancake into the inner sanctuary of the machine where no one could see it. As the griddle continued to rotate, the pancake would come out at which point we were to flip it and then once again stand back and let it rotate. Once it magically appeared a second time it was finished. The belief was that you could standardize the amount of time the pancakes were cooked and eliminate the chance of any pancakes being under or overcooked because we all know how difficult pancakes are to cook. Mickey was very excited.
My parents instilled in me a very strong work ethic. I was punctual, efficient and responsible. Thus I worked up the ranks at McDonalds, my first job, until I became the morning manager. I would arrive at work on Saturday and Sunday mornings at 6 a.m. along with Dave and Don. Dave and Don were a couple of years older than me and would take turns sleeping off hangovers down in the basement on top of the boxes of shake cups while I got the store ready for opening. I didn’t mind this because I had a mad crush on both Dave and Don and knew that once the doors opened, if I let them sleep just a bit longer, they would be there for me and do the job. Plus I was kind of naive and really didn’t know anything about managing people.
Over the next few weeks we had nothing but trouble with the green beast. It would go too fast or it would go too slow or the pancakes would get caught or torn up when they went inside the machine. We had no access to the inside of the green beast so once something happened we would have to turn it off until Mickey could come in and fix it. Many days it just sat there, broken and in our way. It turned our cushy breakfast job into a nightmare. On a daily basis we begged Mickey to take away the machine but for some reason he just wouldn’t let it go. He insisted we just had to give it a chance. Our suspicion was that he had invented it and was hoping its huge success would make him a very rich man.
One morning, Dave, Don and I were working the morning rush and one of the pancakes caught on fire inside the machine. We tried to get it out. We used hamburger flippers to fish around inside the machine for the pancake, we tried pushing it through with the big mac pickle forks, we even tried to pull the front of the machine off. We were frantic in our efforts to do something to get to that pancake. The smoke started pouring out. The green beast was on fire. We were in a panic. Dave called the fire department. Don grabbed the fire extinguisher but just as he stepped forward to put the fire out I held up my hand. He looked at me and smiled. We stood there for another moment or two with that fire extinguisher pointed at the machine and we watched that pancake machine burn and the store fill with smoke. And then, when we were sure the beast had died, we put that fire out.
That morning when Mickey arrived we explained to him how the machine had caught on fire, how we tried desperately to put it out, how we called the fire department, how we were lucky the whole place didn’t burn down. That afternoon the pea green pancake machine was carted away, never to be seen again. It was such a shame we couldn’t get to it in time to save it.