Somehow, despite a regular 'lunch allowance' being deducted from our paychecks and the weird hours, I managed to make enough to buy a bus pass, and still have a little leftover to regularly attend Lil Louis and Frankie Knuckles parties on the weekend.
On our first day, they gave us a printout of the cash register buttons to study. McDonald's wasn't even that advanced/considerate. Two-piece, Wing-dinner, Single breast and a biscuit. Would you like rice, fries or mashed potatoes with that? Occasionally I'd slip up and ask if they'd also like a hot apple pie. The training manager quizzed us:
"What goes in a 2-piece White meal?"
"Two pieces of chicken" replied my fellow trainee.
"A breast, a wing, a biscuit, a side..." I specified.
"And...?" replied the manager.
"Oh yeah", I responded... "And a sporkette!"
To this day, it is true... I will never ever get tired of Popeye's Chicken. Proof lied in the fact that not only did I eat it EVERY day, but I volunteered to work weekends when the boss would force us to take the leftovers home (although it was against company policy). And it's true what they say... and I had begun to cluck and grow feathers on my upper arms.
Sexier people ate at Popeye's, for some unknown reason. Less sexy people worked there, so it was worth it just to show up every day to greet them, and fill their arteries with our special, intestine-lingering cooking oil.
By lunchtime, Popeye's was a chicken-lovers heaven. But in the morning, when opening the store, the mice scattered to their holes to avoid the bright lighting.
It gets worse...
Around noon, a customer, slightly disgruntled, brought her biscuit to the counter and peeled it open. Embedded in the biscuit was a large, dark, oddly shaped piece of cork. You'da thunk the other customers would've been a little thrown by the incident, but they just paused, looked, and continued to place their orders:
"Yeah, uhhh... lemme get two wangs and a biscuit... without the f*in' cork, please."
I volunteered to work on a boring Saturday morning. The shifts are short and the traffic is slow. Unfortunately, we didn't get the nice manager, Vanessa. We got that short, round, balding chick whose name I purposely forgot. That day, we had no hot water, and the cooks resorted to boiling water in large vats, then hauling those vats over to the sinks to wash the dishes. But that didn't leave much hot water to mop the floors with.
I'd told the manger that there was NO way I was scrubbing chicken grease and buttermilk biscuit batter off the cookware in cold water, and the next 'vat' of hot water wouldn't be ready for another half-hour. Her reply was:
"Either you wash those dishes NOW, or clock OUT"... as in ALL the way out. And I knew that's what she meant.
Pshtt!!! I rolled my eyes and unknotted the apron. Folded it, then placed it gently on the counter as I walked out and never came back. Not even for lunch.
That same afternoon, the cook there, a 40+-year old woman, slipped on the oily biscuit batter residue on the floor... while carrying the vat of boiling water from the stove-top to the sink. Third degree burns I heard.
Shit... sorry for her. Glad it wasn't me.
*clicking any 'Ads by Google' on this blog may help pay for hot water in your favorite restaurant*
1 comment:
Once again you made me LOL. My son keeps asking what I'm laughing about over here. I had tears streaming down my cheeks before I realized I was actually laughing about the part with the woman falling with the hot water. My bad. Oops..I just had another laugh attack thinking about it.
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