Tuesday, April 15, 2014

M is for McDonald's

The summer I graduated from high school, I had planned to have no plans. I thought I would spend it hanging out with friends, shopping for items to take to college, sleeping late, watching tv. Kind of a modern version of a southern belle.

My parents had other plans for me.

They expected me to get a job. Whaaaa?

Scarlett O'Hara with a JOB?

I begrudgingly decided on McDonald's, because at least I liked the food. However, I chose one really far from my house, several school districts away, as I didn't want anyone I knew to come in and see me there. I liked the food, but those uniforms?




Now imagine that uniform, the one on the right, above, in a bilious shade of lime green. Pants to match. In double-knit polyester (it was 1978).

And retaining a constant odor of grease.

THAT is why I drove thirty minutes each way to work, rather than the five it would take for me to get to the nearest McDonald's (and that five minutes would have included putting on the uniform, tying my shoes, getting in the car, driving there, and sitting in the car to hear the rest of a song on the radio before I got out - we lived THATCLOSE to a McDonald's).

It was not easy work. Before you could work at any station, you had to watch training videos. My first was the french fry station. We were taught to lift the basket of fries half-way through the frying process and give them a shake, so the fries didn't clump together. After pulling them out of the vat, you had to shake them vigorously a few times, allowing excess oil in the fry basket to fall back into the vat, which prevented both oil drips on the floor and a build up of oil in the french fry bin. When salting, you had to salt from front to back, not side to side; they didn't want salt to get flung sideways, into the cooking vats, as salt breaks down the oil quicker.

The fry person was also the shake maker, as this was before "direct draw" shakes, where a cup is simply filled from a machine. The shakes were made by putting a soft ice cream and flavored syrup in a cup, putting the cup in a mixer, and then taking it off again when it was done. Try doing this during a lunch rush, when counter people are hollering back that they need 3 shakes, the french fry timer is going off, and other counter people are standing there, panting, waiting for their fries, so they can fill an order.

It was no wonder I smelled like a french fry at the end of the day.

Fortunately, I quickly graduated to counter person. The downside of that was that we took orders on order pads and added up the cost ourselves with a pencil. And that I'm bad at math, especially when flustered. I hid one hand under the counter, so I could count on my fingers.

We were also timed at the front counter, expected to get orders taken and filled within 60 seconds. Sometimes, a manager would stand there with a stopwatch. Sometimes, big cheeses (McCheeses, if you will) would come to inspect the restaurant, and THEY would stand around with stopwatches. 

It was hard work. But fun. I made a lot of friends, including a boyfriend who I thought was THE ONE (he so was not - I was 17, what did I know?). Saved up money to use during my first year in college. Learned to work at all the stations in the restaurant, just because I wanted to know how to do it. Never got tired of eating the food (which you did NOT get to eat whenever you wanted; it was strictly governed by management). When asked what was on a Big Mac, I would recite the commercial jingle, "Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonaseseameseedbun."

Have you gone into a McDonald's lately? No one hurries. Oh, except for the people working the drive-thru. Drive-thru orders apparently get priority now, leaving customers in the dining room to languish for up to fifteen minutes or more for their "fast food." Their uniforms are sloppy. The WORKERS are sloppy. No immediate "get a mop" from a manager when something spills on the floor. They have fancy computer registers now, yet they often can't operate them or make change. And have you ever seen anyone shaking the fries halfway through the cooking process? (Maybe you didn't know to look for that, but now you will.) While waiting for my order, I've seen managers grab a basket of fries out of the vat and fling them into the fry bin without giving them one shake, hot oil flying across the floor and onto the fry bin. None of these people would have survived a 1978 McDonald's experience.

Here's the most important thing I learned from working at McDonald's (and, by the way, I continued to work there all through college, switching to one in the town where I attended school, and swapping out the lime green for navy blue): having to deal with the annoyance of parents ordering plain burgers for their children (which required filling out a little slip and turning it into the grill workers, severely throwing a wrench in the 60 second rule), I vowed that when I had children, they would eat their McDonald's hamburgers as God and Ray Kroc intended, with ketchup, mustard, onions and a pickle, and they did.






23 comments:

  1. yummy interesting and fun anecdote from ur teen days . Loved it
    Remembered my KFC post too
    Sadly McD doesnt taste good any more in India. Good to know that u made frnds and U had FUN- the msot imp part :)
    http://afshan-shaik.blogspot.in/

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    1. I don't think McDonald's tastes quite as good as it used to, either. They don't cook things the same way anymore.

      You always make me want friend chicken :)

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  2. I used to love Mickey D's. The first one I went to was in Missouri! I live in New York! I thought I was eating the food of the Gods! Now I never go ( for one thing I am a vegetarian, but for another once you have eaten eight billion of them...you know!). This is a spectacular recollection and a great reflection of you and how you were at that age! Neat! jean xox

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    1. I hope the Missouri McDonald's you went to wasn't the one that used to be on the riverboat in St.Louis. That one was HORRIBLE.

      Do they still have Roy Rogers Burgers all over NYC?

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  3. I quite enjoyed reading this. :) Quite an experience I must say, what with being timed and all. You have an easy style of writing too.
    Thanks for stopping by at my page. For some reason both your comments had gone to the spam folder and had to be 'rescued'!

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    1. Thanks, Shail! And I'm so glad you found my comments in your spam folder! You must be on Wordpress. It HATES me and doesn't publish my comments.

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  4. As I was reading of your experience, I was thinking, "huh. Fast food certainly has changed". I get fast food maybe 10 times per year, and I could tell. Then you pointed it out. Sloppiness of all kinds is reaching epidemic proportions. Not just in fast food.
    I was a waitress at Frisch's Big Boy. My uniform was WAY worse than yours.

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    1. I agree. That sloppiness is reaching epidemic proportions, not that your uniform was way worse. Pictures or it didn't happen....

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  5. Sounds like a LOT of effort. I had part-time jobs in a pie shop, a greeting card shop, a chemist and ... I forget. Somewhere else, while I was in college. Not all at once.

    Then I got the AWFUL job in the old-people home. Then the nursery and that was me Shanghai'd for most of the next decade. Thank GOODNESS for this here job now.

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    1. I figure it was character building. I honestly think everyone should have to work in food service just once in their lives.

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  6. In high school, I worked at a place called Speedi Spaghetti. I only lasted about 3 weeks. It was too depressing seeing all the people who worked there on the day shift spend their evenings hanging out with the high schoolers who worked evenings. Also, even though I knew nothing about the Board of Health regulations, I could tell that this place was sketchy in their compliance at best. After I quit they were shut down by the BOH a couple weeks later and never reopened. I'm certain I had nothing to do with that...

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    1. I think where they first went wrong was calling it "Speedi Spaghetti."

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  7. Ahh, memories about jobs... Really sounds like hard work. The summer after I graduated high school I worked in a factory, because it was the best pay I could get. I hated it the minute I put a foot in it and couldn't wait for the two months to be over. On the up-side: I knew why I was workign so hard in college: never doing any factory work again!!!

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    1. I'd rather do food service than work in a factory! The motivation to stay in college was there for me, too. Especially since the Scarlett O'Hara daughter-of-the-house thing didn't work out so well for me.

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  8. My food service job as on an inner city diner....quite the experience!

    I remember those uniforms and "You deserve a break today at McDonald's! "

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    1. Did you work at a meat-and-three?

      Do you remember the Saturday morning McDonald's commercials? They were all about Ronald McDonald and the Grimace and Hamburgler and all that. Clever marketing....

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    2. I opened the Pheonix Luncheonette every morning at 4:30 am... grease would be clinging to my glasses like a fog by the time 8 rolled around and I went to school... I went back after school until until 6.

      I do remember them... the hamburgler was so lame-o... all that mumbling! How about Mayor McCheese... talk about an impotent legal system! lol!

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  9. This is hilarious! Great detail, I can smell the grease. I'm with you on the finger-counting under the table. Been there. gail

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    1. Oh, yay! Another finger counter! I was really glad when we got computerized registers!

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  10. That's a long way to travel for vanities sake... I agree there is a lot to be learned from working with food

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    1. It was totally worth the travel time, at least, it was then. The McDonald's nearest to my home had baby poop brown uniforms. The green was better by comparison.

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  11. For an insanely picky eater you sure know how to pick some healthy food of choice! McD's diet all the way :p I think I understand the driving so far to work.

    I don't know why, but I've told myself I wouldn't ever work at any fast food establishment or gas station. I'm not exactly sure what I have against doing so, but then again, I pretty much hate working at any establishment lol soooooooo yeah.

    Sounds like the work was a lot more grueling back then compared to now.

    I am not familiar with those cups. What exactly is that character on them?!

    Jak at The Cryton Chronicles & Dreams in the Shade of Ink

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    1. Whoops! Never replied to this! THANK YOU for understanding the need to drive clear across Kansas City to work.

      I think a job where you have lots of people-contact would not be the job for you. No fast food. No gas station.

      Definitely more grueling.

      Those cups are from before my time, but it was the only picture I could steal, I mean, use that had the shake machine in it. That's the original McDonald's mascot. I think his name was Speedy. I'm surprised they didn't test us on that.

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