"Happy Place"

The following foray was written in the 80's on an Apple 2C computer. I had saved these stories via the modern technological advent of floppy disks. Seems I had a love for the semi-colon as you'll notice while perusing the text. The story involves my working at McDonalds at the tender age of 16. Submitted for your approval and perusal:

I dropped a couple of hamburger buns on the floor. The older gentleman in his fifties noticed my faux pas and reacted quickly. He offered me some fatherly advice.

“Do that again, boy, and you’ll be fired,’ he scowled as he bit down on the pipe that he seldom lit.

“Yes sir,” I countered meekly. That’s all I knew to say; I was a little shy and intimidated by this bastion of authority.

Then he in question was my boss, who also happened to be the owner of the store, Emile Shoeman, a nice Irish name if I ever heard one. We were at the Golden Arches, better known as McDonalds, and it was my first day on the job. I had just turned 16 a few months earlier, and I was the new employee and all the new guys started on the grill, our initiation. We had to toast the buns, twelve at a time. Then dress the burgers. A splotch of mustard and a heavy dose of ketchup. Then a small kosher dill pickle of top of the condiment mess.

They gave me an apron, shirt, and hat and pointed me to the grill. I had been on the job about 10 minutes when I dropped two buns on the floor and Emile was on me faster than stink on the ship.

I was really nervous, now. Emile, however, blew off the buns then wiped them on his trousers and plopped them back on the grill, while muttering his aforementioned soliloquy. I was really learning the secrets to American buisness and how to run a super-duper food cost. You don’t waste nothing in the food industry. And you don’t drop buns on the linoleum when the owner’s looking.

Emile had called me the night before. I had been recommended by my friends Heathcliff Murque and Bobus Bobby Keg, who also worked there, and who were my buddies.

“Start work tommorow,” he said hesitantly. I sensed he thought I’d be a dud, but hired me because of my good references.

I made it through that first night, but in retrospect, I wished I had dropped some more buns, or had done the unmentionable: dropped a few burgers on the floor. It’s hard to blow dirt, hair and grime off a burger that’s landed splat, flat on the greasy tiles. But I’m afraid I was destined to be in the food industry.

This was 1968 and things were very primitive in those days. I started my working career making a grand total of $1.00 an hour. Bobby Keg had started out at $.90 an hour, but now made $1.10 because of his longevity and possible merit work. Heath had begun a few weeks before me and made $1.00, too.

McDonalds wasn’t as popular then as it is now. It was still a relatively new concept. People didn’t eat out as much then. There were no happy meals, Egg McMuffins, cookies, salads, ice cream cones. No breakfast items, BBQ sandwiches or even chicken. It was fairly simple. The menu was hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, fish sandwiches, double hamburgers, double cheeseburgers and drinks: root beer, coke, orange, milk shakes and milk.

You poured the coke and root beer out of a big barrell that resembled something akin to a German beer keg. The orange was in a big transparent bowl that swished the imitation juice around and around. The shakes were disapointing to me; I was used to those delicious home-made shakes from Miss Portia's, ye old ice cream shoppe of our day. These shakes were a pathetic imitation of those. You’d squirt the juice, either chocolate or strawberry into your cup and then add soft vanilla ice cream that came from a spout. Then you’d place them on rhe mixer and let them twirl away.

That was our menu. Incredible as it seems now, we had no lettuce or tomatoes. Period. There was no such animal. Since I’m from the South, lived in the South all those 16 years, I found it hard to tell some of my fellow southerners that we didn’t have lettuce or tomatoes for their hamburgers.

“Give me a burger with lettuce and tomato, boy,” some redneck would say as he placed his order.

“We don’t have any, sir,” I would mumble trying hard to sound professional, but my voice would retreat to its pre-puberty roots.

These folks would look incredulous, and I would feel like a damn fool. If they didn’t void the order and walk out, the next worst-case scenario was when you handed them a burger the size of a postage stamp.

“Where’s my burger, boy?”

“Somewhere camoflauged inside your bun, mister.”

“Shit.”

You notice I had graduated to the counter, taking orders. It was the glamour job to all us grill men and spuds men. Spuds men worked the french fries. They were made from fresh potatoes in those days. And popular. And good. And smelly in the summer. A lot of rotten potatoes.

Yeah, the glamour job. Working the counter, taking orders, and, hey, you didn’t get all that sweaty and dirty. It was the ultimate move up. However, after you worked the counter a few weeks, you wanted desperatley back on the grill. At any cost. You were tied down when on the counter; you could always sneak a fag break on the grill. That’s what we called cigarettes in those days. Now, you probably need to come up with another term.

The abuse you recieved from customers was another factor in loathing front-end duty. Too, you had to keep the front end spotless.

One of my first managers, who wore red caps-the peon employees wore white- was a heavy man named Mr. Skinner. He had a way with words and used catchy rhyming slogans to motivate us.

“Mr. Catfish,” talking to yours truly and always by your surname, “you got time to lean, you got time to clean.” And my favorite: “You got time to gripe, you got time to wipe."

And we griped and we wiped. But we didn’t lean, because we were always cleaning. That was one of the sucessful formulas of McDonald. The place looked clean. And the bathrooms were kept clean. The illusion was in place. Even though we had a serious roach problem at the time.

One incident happened that I have never forgotton. The customer was a felow student at Rowdy High. He was in the ROTC, a big guy, senior, and he had a ferocious appetite. I took his order. Five hamburgers, two fries and a large coke. He got his order and had a seat in the lobby on one of those round spinning stools, that are no longer in existance. After about ten minutes, he sauntered back to the counter and motioned to the bottom of his coke. There in the bottom, along with a few ice cubes, was a big dead cockroach.

“What can I do to make it up to you, sir?” I asked praying my voice wouldn’t break from the pressure.

In a split second he requested another large coke. I gave him one. And he was on his happy way. I couldn’t believe it.

The counter was where it was at. That was a term we used in those days. You couldn’t be a dummy to work there, either. No computers to add the totals. You added the items on the order form, or if you were a whiz in math, you added the total in your head. Me and Karl Klapman were prodigies in this regard. We would add the orders in our head as we were bagging the order. We were really fast, and this was really an advantage during the busy lunch rush. However, with the advent of computer technology, this has become a lost art. It has probably saved McDonalds millions of dollars, too. Not many people would question your addition, mainly, because they were too damn dumb, but, maybe, we didn’t make that many mistakes.

There are many stories to tell, but it all started when crusty Emile chided me for dropping those buns. Emile turned out to be a good guy, and Iiked him alot, but where would I be today if I had dropped a few more buns on the floor? Cheese on twelve?