Childhood Career Choices - Part 3
The Golden Arches
Ann, Dave, Beth, Me - At one time all four of us were working at McDonalds.
The sweat drips down the side of my face as I reach over the grill. Proud of myself that I can flip four at a time, my fingertips burning as I hold the burgers in place. Dressing the buns in a flash of clicks coming from the automated ketchup and mustard dispensers. Sliding the tops of the buns off the metal pan in one fell swoop picking up the stray bun that lands on the floor and tossing it on the last burger before anyone even notices. Deftly moving around the kitchen, my first “real” job, my first feeling of successfully mastering all of the skills and minutiae of the store.
Working at McDonalds was a turning point in my life. The McDonalds in our neighborhood was within walking distance from our house and was managed by two men, Mickey, a younger man who was rumored to choose the lead window girls by who slept with him and Bill, a creepy older man with a southern accent who patted our butts as he walked by and called us all Babe and Sweetie. Despite the personality of the managers I loved working at McDonalds. For the first time in my life I felt the camaraderie of a group of people my age as we weathered the storms of the fast food industry. In addition I excelled at all of the stations of the store. Super grillman, french fry queen, window girl extraordinaire, I had it all. For what I felt was the first time in my life I was good at something.
The girls all strutted around in short sleeved form fitting v-neck baby blue uniform dresses with the McDonalds logo upon our breasts. The dresses could not be above our knees although I think both Mickey and Bill could have cared less and hoped we would break this rule. In addition there lay atop our head a very attractive large flat blue bow much like Pollyanna in the old Disney film. The outfit was topped off with pantyhose and white shoes. All in all a quite provocative outfit. With my hair pulled back and my wire rimmed glasses I really rocked it. The boys had a blue shirt to match our dresses so we were quite charming as a group. Although they were allowed to forego the blue bows.
Working the grill was my favorite job. Since it was almost always the boys that would work the grill I was one of only a few of the girls who managed to be trained at the job. I made it a point to be as fast as the fastest boy just to prove that girls could do the job too. Along with the french fry station it was also the greasiest job and I would go home with a thin layer of grease covering me from head to toe and smelling like a fish had died in my pocket.
Being a front window girl was also one of my favorites mostly because I liked to compete with the other girls for the highest sales amount in an hour. Every hour the lead girl would come around to see how much we had racked up in our cash registers. Except for Debbie Doherty I was almost always the top ringer. We all loved what we called the rushes. It was the time of day that usually lasted 1-2 hours when the store was packed and we could barely catch our breath between customers. We would take the orders and then slide our white shoes across the greasy floor traversing from one station to the other picking up the necessary items to fill an order. The two grills would be in full swing every inch covered with burgers, one basket of fries after the other dipped in the boiling grease. We were all working our fastest trying to beat our most recent record for hourly income.
The first and only “bad boy” I ever dated I met at McDonalds. Joe carried nunchaku sticks with him - two short sticks connected by a chain used in martial arts as a weapon. When I asked him why he said he had some enemies. This was both exciting and terrifying to me but I once witnessed his brother at a party backing a large beast of a man into a corner using nunchakus so I had no doubt Joe knew how to use them. So naive was I that I didn’t recognize the sweet smell in his car as being the smell of marijuana. Every once in awhile Joe would be in a really bad mood at work. It wasn’t until I realized that he smoked pot on a regular basis that I knew his bad moods were when he wasn’t smoking. I dated other boys from McDonalds but no one ever captured my heart like Joe did.
McDonalds also introduced me to the party scene. My group of friends at school were not big partiers so the parties I attended were with my McDonalds co-workers. They usually involved lots of alcohol and lots of people making out in different parts of the house. I tended to wander around not knowing what I was supposed to be doing until someone took pity on me and stopped to talk. Being one of the youngest in the group I suspect they all knew how naive I was and watched out for me although Dave Nielsen did teach me how to drink southern comfort one night. I tried really hard to look like I enjoyed it but . . . well . . . no.
We were one of the first McDonalds to start serving breakfast in the mornings. I became the morning manager probably because no one else wanted to get up that early. But Dave and Tom joined me, usually quite hung over and pretty useless. They slept on the shake cup boxes in the basement while I set everything up and when the store opened they headed upstairs disheveled and weary but able and willing to work the back while I worked the front. I didn’t mind doing all of the set up because they were both cute and I liked having them there with me.
I made $1.65 an hour at McDonalds, recently raised from $1.50 an hour. It made for good spending money although I always put half in the bank to save for college. I would work about 20 hours a week, mostly weekends and so I would see a grand total of $66 for two weeks of work - and that was before taxes. Still better than babysitting which at the time was 50 cents an hour - 75 cents an hour if they were being generous.
When I finally left McDonalds my senior year in high school, I left with these insights:
You don’t have to sleep with the manager to be promoted to Lead Window Girl.
Learning more than one skill at a job is always good and girls can do anything boys can do.
Don’t be afraid to ask for a raise because if you don’t think you deserve one, they certainly won’t.
Southern Comfort burns all the way down.
Bad boys may be exciting but they do not make good boyfriends.
Anything can look good on you if you wear it with confidence.
Never eat at fast food restaurants run by teenagers.