It's MY Pleasure

I've worked a lot of fast food in my 34.9 years. Let's see...there's Tom's Place when I was 15, Captain D's was right after that, and then it seems Hardee's fell in there somewhere during a summer home from college. And there's one simple thing all of those jobs had in common.

 

They all sucked.

 

Big time. I HATED them.

 

Captain D's was the best, even though I would got tossed into the ice machine on a daily basis. That's just what you get for being mouthy, I suppose. Can anyone say sexual harassment?

 

Anyways, the training time for each of those jobs was about...hmmm...let's say 30 minutes. You could learn everything you needed to know to earn $4.25 an hour in exactly a half hour. No more. Seems like I watched a couple of VHS tapes on "customer service" and then they fed me to the angry, hungry people of the Searcy, Arkansas fast food industry. I was all "trained up" and ready to be attacked.

 

And attacked I was.

 

So, no, I didn't magically know what was in a Seafood Sampler or a Deluxe Platter. But I learned. Fast. AND, in all of my lacking mathematical skills, I somehow learned how to count change back IN MY HEAD without using a cash register. I'm still pretty damn proud of that skill. You see, I'm a words gal. Math is for people that can't spell. But now, thanks to my on-the-job training at the best fast food seafood restaurant on the planet, that sophisticated math formula guy from Good Will Hunting ain't no match for me.

 

Point is this: I made minimum wage, which in my 15-year-old mind equated to minimum caring. I didn't care that your hamburger had tomatoes on it instead of lettuce or if the chips I gave you were salted or unsalted. But you know who does care?

 

Chick-fil-A. They care. They even tell you about it every chance they get with their "it's my pleasure" crap. And once, just ONCE I want to come back with, "do you really? Do you REALLY care?"

 

They don't. They can't. But what matters is that Chick-fil-A somehow gets their people to say it all the time company wide. And what's up with the lines there? They always seem to have like 8 lines running simultaneously.

 

I mean that place has more employees than Springdale has Mexican restaurants.

 

But listen Chick-fil-A execs...your kids meal toys completely blow. They're **gasp** educational toys, paperback books, or random cow printed toothbrushes. Thanks for letting my educational resistant kids trade in your toys for a free ice cream cone. A little bit more sugar won't kill 'em. Will it? Hadn't killed 'em yet.

 

But then again I'm really just figuring this parenting thing out as I go, so I really have no earthly idea. I'll keep you posted.