Fast Food Flunky

Society's Fractured Relationship with fast Food Workers

In 1984 I was living in Littleton Colorado. I was a high school dropout with few practical job skills, and a 17 year-old living in an apartment with my girlfriend at the time and our infant son.

All these years later, it’s almost unfathomable for me to think about how crazy that situation was, and yet somehow I managed to cobble together enough work to pay the bills and make it work.

To make matters more complicated, I was a transplant from Rochester N.Y, and at the time Denver was not the most welcoming place for “transplants” like me.

And what industry would hire a 17 year-old high school dropout from out of state with a mullet in 1984? Fast food.

Anyone that has worked in fast food will tell you, it’s difficult and thankless work, with few long-term prospects. Fast food places are constantly under pressure to keep controllable costs down, and that means the second they can justify sending an employee home, they will do it.

In some ways I was fortunate, because I had guaranteed shifts, at least the start time was guaranteed, and if you really wanted hours, somebody was always calling in sick.

My day began at Arby’s at 6:30 AM. I was tasked with scrubbing the grease off the back deck, cleaning the dumpster area, and the bathrooms and then I had to walk around the store and pick up all the cigarette butts before the restaurant opened. The manager on duty had eagle eyes, and if I missed a cigarette he let me know for the rest of the shift.

By lunch time, my job was to fill the soda orders, and keep the dining room swept and mopped and empty the garbage when it began to overflow-you didn’t want to empty the garbage too soon because garbage bags cost money!

Even with all of those important duties, I still had to get a second job, because unless you are a manager, you will not get 40 hours a week.

My second job was the better of the two, it was at Taco Bell. Arby’s was greasy and smelly, even though some items were fried, your clothes didn’t smell nearly as bad after a shift at Taco Bell, and I worked the night shift, so we did food trades with other Restaurants in the area.

I still remember the cast of characters that I worked with, including one of our assistant managers who was taking anabolic steroids, and another who relocated from Northern Ireland.

The guy who took steroids began to bulk up, but one day when I asked him how things were going he mentioned that he stopped taking the steroids because they made a certain part of his body shrink.

The guy from Ireland, he was older than all of us, and one night when we were the last two people working he told me his story. He had to leave Northern Ireland because his neighbors found out his wife was Catholic. It was hard to listen to, and when he came to the United States the only job he could find was at Taco Bell.

We were all misfits in one way or another. The things we had in common were a work ethic and the fact we were all survivors.

My typical week was insane, with Taco Bell shifts ending as late as 1:00 AM and Arby’s shifts starting the following morning at 6:00 AM. We eventually decided it made more sense for my girlfriend to work days and then I kept the night job at Taco Bell.

My girlfriend landed a job as a secretary at a law firm. With me being gone nights and her being home alone, you can guess what happened.

Her best friend at the time told me she was dating one of the lawyers in the firm, and then I lied to her one evening and told her I was going to work and I waited for him to come over.

It turned out her parents, and everyone else in the family knew what was going on, and they even baby sat so the two of them could go out. We had a huge argument and then she stormed out of the apartment, baby in hand.

Within the hour, her father and brother showed up and gave me two hours to pack, and a ride to the Greyhound bus station.

I will never forget what her father said to me, “Why would my daughter want to be with some loser that works at Taco Bell when she is working with professionals all day. Go back to New York, get an education and forget about her.”

The word “loser” played in my head over and over.

It replayed in my head for the three days I slept in that Greyhound Bus station waiting for money to be wired to me. It played in my head throughout the cross country trip home.

In the post-pandemic climate of 2021, fast workers are in short supply. There aren’t enough “losers” to fill the positions, and theories abound as to why some fast food restaurants are either closing or running short-staffed.

While the obvious culprit seems to be enhanced unemployment benefits, fast food jobs have always been considered the very bottom of the employment ladder, with the possible exception of migrant farm labor. (At least fast food employers are bound by regular wage and hour laws)

When fast food workers fought for $15 an hour, the backlash was that they would all be replaced by kiosks. The implied message was, “be grateful for your job because you can easily be replaced.”

And yet here we are, fast food restaurants and society are blaming the “losers” again, this time because they are lazy and entitled. One local official near where I live wrote that the extra $300 a week benefits are “lucrative.”

lucrative adjective producing a great deal of profit.

Fast food work is hard work. It is thankless. Almost every other profession has an appreciation week, and yet our fast food workers, the group that could use some support, emotionally and financially, are looked down upon.

If they are replaced by kiosks, who will replace them as society’s “losers?” After all, you can’t yell at a kiosk and post the interaction on social media and make it go viral.

So while society may condemn fast food workers as ungrateful, lazy bums with no other job prospects, they are typically hard working and resourceful. They quit because they are not respected and not paid well, and considered “unskilled.”

But speaking from experience, my time working in the fast food business taught me many things, especially how to persevere, even when everyone else in the world thinks you are a loser.

Around 35 years later I met back up with the guy who called me a loser, and when he realized who I was after we were introduced, he joked, “I bet you didn’t like me much back then,” and for a moment it seemed like a million snarky responses kicked around in my head.

Here was a guy who still exuded confidence, and looked like one of society’s “winners.” There was a part of me that found solace in the fact he even remembered me, and in spite of his best efforts, his grandchild bore my last name, the last name of that loser who made tacos.

And while my story is a personal one, I am sure there are many people who continue to look down upon fast food workers as society’s debris, and not as resourceful survivors. You may hate them, but when there aren’t enough of them people begin to appreciate their role in society.

But there was nothing I could say that would make things right, or even change his mind. So as I looked him in the eye and he said, ““I bet you didn’t like me much back then,” I simply replied, “That’s true…and I still don’t.”