I don’t know if it is something in my nature or my upbringing, but I’ve always loved to work and earn money. My first job where I drew a regular paycheck was at Wendy’s. Even though it was minimum wage (2.65/hour), it was steady and I was working 40+ hours a week. While there, I became friends with my future wife, and we began dating, so that’s the most important thing about that time, but that’s a story for another day. I worked every position in the place, but my favorite was grill man. You didn’t have any real contact with the public, and as long as you were doing your job right, the whole place could run smoothly.
Being a competent grill man wasn’t difficult. By the end of your first shift, you knew how to cook the burgers the Wendy’s way. There were two keys to being great at it. Key number one was to avoid getting ‘burned’ – the term for the situation where there was an order for a burger, and you didn’t have one ready. Key number two was to avoid making ‘chili meat.’ If the burgers were on the grill too long, they would no longer be ‘hot and juicy’ – Wendy’s slogan at the time. Those would be chopped up and put in chili, but if you made more than was needed for chili, they went in the trash, and that was money lost.
Finding the balance between the two was part art and part science. You learned to watch the parking lot and, in my case, the parking lot across the street. If a couple of busses showed up, I loaded up the entire grill. Usually, that worked well for me. I do remember one time when a bus rolled in, and it was a group of seniors. I probably had 60 burgers down, and we sold one – we did move a lot of Frosty’s, though. Then we made some chili.
One time I had a guy complain that his burger was too greasy. I wondered what he expected coming to a Wendy’s, but we tossed it, and I gave him a non-Wendy’s burger. I moved a good burger to the hot side of the grill, and I dried it out for a couple of minutes. It was still edible but dry. He brought it back again, still too greasy. I moved another one over, and I burned it to a crisp. It looked like a piece of charred beef jerky, only thicker. I thought a man might need the biting strength of an alligator to get through it, but after a few minutes, he had not come back with it. Maybe thirty minutes later, he took the time to come back and tell me it was perfect. Go figure.
A couple of times in my employment, new management trainees got their education at our Wendy’s. Being right off the interstate, we were one of the busiest stores at the time. They probably had some training before they got there, but they came in and learned every job in the store. None of it was rocket science, but it still took a few weeks. When they felt the trainees were ready, they tested them. They put them in charge, and they left them. If they got in trouble, they could call a manager, but none of them would answer. Sink or swim.
We had this one trainee, and they decided his test would be on the second shift on a Sunday. Sunday’s are not bad, but they are irregular. You get lunch and supper rushes, but they are more spread out than weekdays. One other thing you got in those days was another rush after church on Sunday evenings. So they set this guy up by making sure he would run out of two things – ketchup and hamburgers, and neither is suitable for a hamburger joint.
I was working the grill as usual, and when I had gotten to the point where I needed another pan of meat, I went to the refrigerator and pulled one out – the last one. I told the trainee guy we needed someone to start pattying meat. He said we’d be fine. We weren’t. Then we ran out of ketchup. He tried to call a manager, but no one answered. The poor guy panicked and left. We never saw him again.
So a bunch of teenage kids made some decisions. I fired up the pattying machine. Another kid went to the grocery store and bought ketchup. The other workers doubled up on their duties, and we got through it.
I primarily worked the evening shift, so I was there from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. or later. I was too wound up to go straight home and go to sleep. So, I usually went over to the Mobil gas station/convenience store where my cousin Eddie Wise was working overnight. I would hang out there for a couple of hours eating junk food and shooting the breeze with Eddie. I would then go home, sleep until noon, get up, and do it all over again. I had one July where I worked all 31 days, but I was young and had a blast doing it. A lot of people consider a fast food job the bottom of the barrel when it comes to jobs, but it was a good place to start for me.
“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.