I consider myself to be an optimistic person, and last winter when my parents saw my bad grades, I tried to look on the bright side and said, “But hey, I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance.” Mom and dad failed to see the humor in that because apparently, if you get bad grades, your insurance rates go up A LOT. So I had to get a job.
It always cracks me up when you get a job and they have these training videos that they show you.
Like, they talk about stuff like sexual harassment, and they always give you the most blatant and over-the-top examples. They show some seedy looking business man and he’s like, “Hey Jenny, I just got a new couch in my office, what do ya’ say we break her in?” And then he winks at her.
Or they show two people talking about the uniforms like it’s the greatest outfit they’ve ever worn. They’re like, “Oh I love these clothes, sometimes I wear them around when I’m not even working, and then one of my friends walks up to me, and they’re like, ‘Hey, where’d you get that great outfit, is that like a Versace or something?'” And they say, “Oh, no I just work at McDonald’s – I’m lovin’ it.”
I used to work at Tim Horton’s. If you’ve never been there, it’s a coffee and doughnut place. We always got so busy on Saturday mornings, it was crazy. It was like the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan.
One time I got in such a hurry putting new coffee in to brew, that I didn’t realize it was already brewing, and pulled the basket out anyway. I suggest you never do that. You get hit by all of these coffee grounds and scalding hot coffee water, and it also hits the guy next to me, and he starts freaking out. He’s like “MY EYES! MY EYES!”
And I was so busy, that I didn’t have time to really feel bad. I just shouted, “Medic!” But those were crazy times. You didn’t think, you just reacted.
Sometimes we’d run out of coffee. That was always fun. People would freak out when that happened. “How can you be out of coffee? This is a coffee place!” Hey, accidents happen – planes crash, don’t they?
Most Saturdays they had me at the drive-thru window handing the food out. That was the worst job (aside from anything in BG dining services) in the world, especially in the winter time.
By the end of the day, my hands would be all cracked and bloodied. It never made sense that they left me doing it so long because it isn’t very appetizing to have someone whose hands looked like he just came out of a bear-knuckle boxing match giving you your food.
But I guess I understand why they had me out there. They obviously needed their best worker in the drive-thru window (well, that’s at least what I’ve logically assumed).
Although I did try to lead a no drive-thru uprising. Places that sell doughnuts should not have drive-thrus because half the time you get people coming through who don’t have a clue what they want.
You’d get someone, “Yeah, I want a doughnut, I forget what it’s called but it’s the one with the thing and the stuff and the thing.”
And I’d just be standing there, “Um … chocolate cream?”
“Yeah, that sounds right. That’s cream filled right?” Then they get it – and it has been scientifically proven what people do when they get the wrong item in a drive-thru – they look in the bag – look at me – look back in the bag – shake their head in an east to west motion and say, “This – this isn’t right, I wanted a glazed doughnut.”
Or one time, this couple came in with their kids (I don’t remember how many, could have been one or two, or maybe nine or ten – thousand), and they made a little (and when I say little, I mean ginormous) mess. And the mom is apologizing as they walk out and I see this tornado touchdown zone of a mess, and she says, “Sorry, the kids spilled a little bit of water.”
And I thought, “Yeah, since when is water orange?”
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