Fast Food Tales

My earlier post about Whopper Freak Out got me reminiscing about my days as a fast food worker. I worked at Burger King, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. I worked at other places too – in between my 3-9 month stints at fast food places – but the allure of starting work the next day, which is often what these fast food places can offer, overcame me time and again.

I know you’re not supposed to blog about work, but this is work from 20 years ago. Still, I’m not going to say anything that could get anyone into trouble and I’m not going to rail against my employers. They have enough karma to worry about without assistance from me.

Here’s what I remember about my fast food days.

The Burger King where I put in most of my time was in downtown Ann Arbor during the crack (cocaine) 80s. Ann Arbor had a drug problem like everywhere else. Furthermore the Burger King I worked at was located in between two bars.

We had a direct line to the police station at the front counter (yes, it was red, no, it didn’t have numbers you could dial. you picked it up, there you were). We locked our bathrooms by police order at 7 because people were smoking crack in them. The store was operated by a bunch of 17-21 year olds with a manager usually not more than 25. My regular shift was 4-closing on Friday and Saturday nights (we closed at 11 and then cleaned up).

My best stint was with this guy who was a UofM student, from the Middle East, with just enough Prince Charming in him that when drunk men started giving the female front counter staff a hard time he would come up of his own volition and talk them down. Management didn’t do that of their own volition. All he ever asked was that we get him a strawberry shake before we wiped down the machine for the night. Great Guy, may your life be beautiful, wherever you are.

You always knew when something was going down because the voice from the front calling for a manager over the mic system (y’know how Burger King used to call your meals over a mic to the back?) waivered and sounded afraid and right after that you heard someone shouting, “Then f* you, I don’t need this s***!”

One evening a drunk guy came over the counter at one of my fellow workers. She ladeled grease out of the fryer and flung it at him. Me? I’d have run for a room with a door, although none of them had locks there. C. flung fryer grease. That woman had a serious feel for self-preservation.

My favorite job at Burger King was washing dishes. That task was a possibility every day for the last two hours of my shift. Sometimes I’d get it, sometimes not. That sounds wretchedly not-customer-focused but I think you can understand it.

I know Ann Arbor has a reputation as an over-priced college town, clean and respectable and intellectual – the “Berkley of the Midwest.” Crack and alcohol didn’t get the memo.

I also worked the front counter of the downtown Ann Arbor Burger King through two Art Fairs. If you’ve been to Art Fair, I don’t need to say anything more. If you haven’t, imagine a line of 50 people for ten to twelve hours a day for four days. At least we had air conditioning, a bathroom, and a constant drink at hand, which is something most Art Fair go-ers can’t say. But I also missed the Art Fair entirely, I started before it and ended after it each day.

My time as a McDonald’s Drive-Thru Princess was better. Your kid getting a fast food job? TELL THEM TO GET A JOB AT A CORPORATE-OWNED STORE, NOT A FRANCHISE. The managers tend to be pompous, but the treatment is better over-all.

Pizza Hut had the best food and the worst management. If I say anything at all about management its going to get someone into trouble so I’ll just stop there. Definitely a franchise. It really, really matters. The most endearing fast food story I can think of comes from working at Pizza Hut. Technically, what we did was breaking the rules, but I’m not so worried about it (God, I am so rule-focused). We would call KFC or McDonalds and trade pizzas for their meals. One of our drivers would go out and make the trade. We’d be so excited.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the best that working at fast food got for me. Those were the single best moments of my times in a silly hat and polyester pants – eating KFC at a Pizza Hut.